


Devil May Care

by CrimeSolvingDevil (LouBigSpoon)



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel Wings, Angels, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Antichrist, Arguing, Baby Fic, Betrayal, Biblical Reinterpretation, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Chloe Decker Finds Out, Chloe Decker Needs A Hug, Chloe betrays Lucifer, Coparenting, Dan Espinoza Finds Out, Demonic Possession, Demons, Disappointment, Discussion of Abortion, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fuck you Marcus Pierce, Graphic description of birth, Heaven, Heaven & Hell, Hell, Hurt Chloe Decker, Hurt Lucifer, Hurt Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), I had to sorry, Insecure Lucifer, Insecure Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Kidnapping, Lightbringer, Like seriosuly you should reconsider reading this thing, Love Triangles, Lucifer and Chloe argue, Lucifer as a step father, Lucifer is a really good dad, Lucifer is the lightbringer, MIND THE TAGS YOU PEOPLE, Minor Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, Minor Eve/Lucifer Morningstar, Miracles, Mutual Pining, OC Baby - Freeform, One-sided pining, Partner Betrayal, Partnership, Pining, Post-Devil Face Reveal to Chloe Decker, Post-Season/Series 02, Pregnancy, Questionable parenting choices, Regret, Regretful Chloe Decker, SHIT CAN GET VERY TRIGGERING, Season 3 doesn’t exist, Season 4 Rewrite, Season 5A elements, Slight Cannon divergence, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Spoilers to all seasons, Step-Devil, The next tags are all the things I forgot to add and I’m too lazy to put up top, There’s Lucifer and Eve here guys sorry, This shit is really angsty, Unplanned Pregnancy, Unrequited Love, Wingfic, Wings, Wordcount: Over 100.000, but significantly more than, but you know how death works in this fandom, fighting Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, hybrid baby, probably, seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 67,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26783818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LouBigSpoon/pseuds/CrimeSolvingDevil
Summary: When Chloe finds Lucifer half-conscious, laying in the middle of California’s desert, with a pair of angel wings sticking out of his back, her whole world turns upside down. And what does she do about it? She flees the country, of course.Chloe Decker must face a truth that, although it was inevitable, she was never ready to accept: the devil is real. And her partner. And the man she kind of has an embarrassing crush on. And the only man she has ever had sex with ever since she divorced Dan.How are they going to deal with things once Chloe is forced to get her life back together and go back to Los Angeles? Or what is worse, how are they going to deal with the little, tiny detail that grew out of it?Or the season 4 rewrite nobody asked for, where season 3 doesn’t exist, Chloe’s wet dream wasn’t a dream and she and Lucifer have a child together, they have to coparent, they still suck at communicating, and season 4 happens.
Relationships: Chloe Decker & Lucifer Morningstar, Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, Dan Espinoza & Lucifer Morningstar, Eve/Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV)
Comments: 175
Kudos: 328





	1. Memories of a happy yesterday.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi again!! How are you guys!! I’ve missed you soooo damn much!
> 
> I’m so excited to be bringing this baby to y’all. 
> 
> Devil May Care will see Chloe and Lucifer struggling to overcome their differences as a child is brought in the middle of it, and season 4 happens all around them, and I seriosuly can’t wait to hear y’all! You’ll see them laugh, cry, and eventually overcome their issues as they face the first couple of months of their child’s life. 
> 
> Sadly, Katie, my beautiful friend who beta-read some chapters in SGTDE won’t be joining us because #life, so it’s all me now!
> 
> I’ll be uploading this fanfic every Friday at 5pm PST, and I just hope you love her just as much as I do!
> 
> Remember to follow me on Instagram @crime_solvingdevil where I post shitty stuff about Lucifer and some about my life!!
> 
> Thank you for joining me in this wild ride and welcome if this is the first work of mine you read! I love to have you here!
> 
> All my love, Rena.

One hundred and ninety-two days. 

That was the time that needed to pass before Lucifer could see Chloe again. Well... if you counted the three days he was left unconscious in the desert, then it was one hundred and ninety-five. 

The last memory he could recall of her was secured under lock and key inside his heart. Like a mirage, he was almost able to completely conjure the silhouette of her perfect features, those he had come to learn over the years. The dry and hostile environment he would later learn was California's desert had no effect on his eidetic memory. A creeping, cold fear of it all being a hallucination had wounded its way into his mind, but only days later he would find out she was nothing but the truth. Knowing that his mind didn’t create the image of her out of sheer desperation was the epitome of bittersweet. 

The six and a half months that followed were nothing short of torture. And he knew torture.

He would then learn the reason why Chloe had erased herself from the map, the reason why she was no longer part of his life as she had once been. 

After he left her a voicemail telling her he'd explain everything about him, he went missing. Someone knocked him out and the next thing he knew, he was lying on the hot sand in California's desert, inexplicably in possession of the first sunburn of his very long existence. As weird as waking up all groggy and disoriented in the middle of nowhere might have been, what angered him the most was the pair of white, heavenly, fluffy, angel wings that were sticking out of his back. Something he had never asked for, something he surely didn't want, and something he would be cutting off as soon as he got back to civilization. 

Except that things, as always, didn't work out the way he wanted them to. 

Upon arrival at the precinct, he saw that Chloe was nowhere to be found. She had taken weeks upon weeks of unused vacation that had piled up over the years and fled the country. Where to? Lucifer couldn't possibly know, no one would tell him. The only one who knew was Daniel —because the urchin had gone with Chloe, too—, and the only thing Daniel had in store for the devil was a shower of crap about what he might have done to scare Chloe away for good. 

Having that newly found pressure of being the sole reason why Chloe ran away made him rush into something he otherwise would have never done: showing Daniel proof of the truth. 

Even if Dan's reaction to him being the devil had been rather harsh and worthy of regret, a couple of weeks later Lucifer found himself at ease with his rushed decision. After all, the poor man deserved a reasonable explanation why his ex-wife and daughter fled the country, and Lucifer had been able to give it to him. While his life without Chloe was as awful as it could possibly get, having Dan on his side —eventually— made things a lot better. 

Lucifer could say he had been taken aback by Daniel's reaction to the existence of divinity. While it did take him a couple of weeks to get himself to interact with Lucifer and Amenadiel the way he used to, once he got over it things went sort of back to normal. He had countless questions about everything and, had they been in any other situation, Lucifer would just have told him to shut up or something. However, since Daniel was the only human he had on his side, he had learnt to treat him with patience.

Their relationship did nothing but evolve from then on. They became partners, as Lucifer's only way to keep working for the LAPD was to have a detective on his side, and together they solved crimes all around LA. And he wouldn't lie, he wouldn't have been able to live through those tough times without Daniel by his side. That, and the knowledge that Chloe would eventually have to come back, as her life and her daughter's life was in Los Angeles.

Over those six months, Lucifer's emotions went for a ride in the most merciless rollercoaster, one that went through all kinds of stages and varietals except for happiness. Or any positive emotion, really. Lucifer's 'good days' might as well be his neutral days. The best he could hope for was neutrality, and if things didn’t go the way he wanted them to, then they would just go downhill. Anger, disappointment, sadness, longing, just to mention a few. 

First, he didn't understand what had gone wrong, why one day everything was okay and then the other it wasn't. Then, once he realized that the sighting of Chloe’s blurry silhouette back when he was half-conscious in the desert hadn't been a hallucination, everything started to sink in. 

She had seen his wings. 

She had seen him in all his angelic glory, with the wings he so despised attached to his back. She had seen evidence, proof, that Lucifer had never been living inside a crazy metaphor that helped him mask his trauma, no. She was a woman of logic, and all she had needed to prove his truth was seeing him there. She had realized that everything he had ever told her was as real as it could possibly get, and therefore, what else?

Lucifer felt kind of disappointed at the very beginning. He had been so determined to tell her everything, from the very start. If she had bolted and fled the country while Lucifer told her, he wouldn’t know what he would've done. But then again, there hadn't been a moment of exchange, a single second where they could talk things through. 

And then, anger sunk in. And it hit him deeply, right where it hurt. 

He had been honest with her all along. He had never told her a single lie. Evade the truth? Mask it a little? Yes, of course, everyone did that. But he had actually introduced himself to her as the devil. How could she react that way when all the cards had been on the table since the very beginning? 

Then, sadness hit him like a rock. It destroyed him in such a way he was unable to leave the penthouse. He would drag himself towards the bathroom, he would just cry his eyes out. His heart was hurting because the woman he had feelings for was terrified of him, so scared that she took an unlimited vacation and had fled to who knows where and wanted nothing to do with him. Who could blame her, though? He was a monster. He was the reason why humans sinned; he was evil incarnate. How could she just ignore all of that?

Ultimately, when his life kind of started to gain some sense of normalcy back, he started to feel the longing. He missed her. He ached for her; he wanted his best friend back. He missed all her remarks and her way of treating him like an overgrown child. He missed her eye rolls, her every-once-in-a-while snorts every time he did something stupid. He missed her smile, her laugh, the deepness and overall beauty of her eyes. He missed everything about her and there was nothing he wanted more than to experience working side by side with her for just one more day. 

All he had left to do since then, was wait. He had to wait for Chloe to come to terms with whatever she saw, with whatever she felt. He had to wait for her to reconcile with all of it, and because he cared about her, he would wait. There just were no shortcuts. 

He could only hope that the little bit of a romantic story they had had in the near past wouldn't just contribute to her freaking out, or her coming to terms with what she saw. 

Sleeping with her had been one of the most beautiful, memorable things that had ever happened to him, and yet, also the one thing he wished he could undo right then. Maybe if they hadn't been involved romantically, Chloe would have it easier and would come back sooner, but truth is not even celestials can mess with time. Everything he had to hold onto as of then was the memory of that wonderful night after they first kissed, and treasure it much like he treasured anything that had to do with her. 

He would always remember what she felt like, what she made him feel. It was engraved in his skull, in the back of his eyes, on every single one of the places Chloe had touched. There was no way Lucifer could close his eyes and not relive that night over and over again. She had been like nothing else he'd ever had; she'd made him feel like no one else ever could, she'd been everything he had ever imagined and even more. The way all his senses heightened and turned into dust at the very same time the moment he entered his climax would be something he would always remember and would always hope he could relive again. However, something told him that the only woman able to deliver such a thing was somewhere in the world, trying to come to terms with the fact that she'd had sex with the devil. 

And indeed, she was. 

Chloe just felt... lost. Like everything she had ever believed in and everything she had ever been told was a lie. A complete and utter lie. 

First of all, her partner had fucking wings. Two huge, white, shiny, beautiful, worthy of worshipping angel wings. He was an angel. A fucking archangel. 

Then, once that thought settled in as comfortably as it could, was when Chloe got moving. Her partner, who was lying unconscious in the desert and had a pair of angel wings sticking out of his back might as well have been telling the truth all along. If he had wings right then, how crazy was it that all the other stuff he had said was real? What if he actually was an angel that fell from the actual Heavens and got condemned to rule Hell for all of eternity? Shit. That was when everything got far too real for her to handle. 

She just remembers going back into her cruiser after having tracked Lucifer down. Sometimes, having a miniature GPS tracker on a ring you're really fond of can come in handy when you go missing, and that was how she had found him after three days of having no news about him. However, after seeing the state he was in and everything he was... all she could do was run away. 

She remembers getting home, running upstairs and packing up two suitcases with things for herself and Trixie. She didn't care what she threw in there, she just needed to get out, to run. She then took all the cash she had with her, all her cards, her and daughter's passports and drove like a maniac to Trixie's school. Everything that was in her mind was the inhumane need to leave, to flee before the big, bad beast in the desert woke up and tried to look for her once again.

And she did. 

She got to the airport with a very nervous Trixie by her side and bought two tickets to Lisbon, Portugal, which was the first flight leaving for Europe that afternoon. They would go on from there, figure it out. Whatever happened with Daniel, who stayed back in LA, or Lucifer, well... only time would tell. 

She contacted Dan a couple of days after leaving, once they had settled in an Airbnb in Florence, Italy. She needed to decide what she'd do with Trixie's education while they were on their getaway, and Dan deserved to know where his daughter was. She contacted him from a remote address, trying to cover her tracks enough so that neither Lucifer nor Maze could track her down if they wanted to. They would have to move soon enough, though, because there was a limited number of bank transactions she could make before Lucifer noticed where she was and came get her. 

It was a bit of paranoid thinking, but in her defense, she had just learned that all the fairytales written in the Bible about angels and demons, God, the snake and the apple, fucking Jesus... all of them were true. She didn't know who to trust anymore, and she certainly wouldn't be trusting the embodiment of evil, no. Even if it meant losing a partnership she had valued so much back in the day. At that time, the last thing on her mind was her and Lucifer's 'greatest hits', as he would probably call them. Her mind had been completely in fight or flight mode —flight, more than anything—, and until she got a hold of herself and managed to deal with that, she'd keep fleeing. It was all that there had been on her mind. Keeping herself and her daughter safe from the big bad devil was everything that mattered.

Well, that and the fact that her period was due when they first arrived in Florence, and four days later the sucker still hadn't shown up. 

On the mere flickers of time she had been actually in full control of her mind and her thoughts, she felt calm about it. She wouldn't stress, she wouldn't doubt. Lucifer was a completely different species than she was, so, according to basic biology, she shouldn't be able to get pregnant at all. Maybe it was the stress of the situation, maybe her hormones were going a little haywire with all the changes she was going through, maybe she had late on-set PCOS. That's what logic had said the very few times her mind hadn't been in a frenzy, looking for safety. 

Then, all the other ninety-nine per cent of the time, she freaked the fuck out. 

She thought so much she could swear she could smell her hair burning, smoke escaping through her ears. She really didn't want to be pregnant. She couldn't be. She couldn't and wouldn't be the one to bring the antichrist into existence, no. She wanted to be her logical, evidence-trusting self, but that would mean she would have to see things she didn't want to see. Like the way her breasts were so tender that the sheer touch of her shirt's fabric would hurt, or the way she constantly felt so moody and unstable, or the way that smells that normally wouldn't bother her would just send her into a fit of vomiting. 

Oh, how she wished that the night that followed her and Lucifer's first kiss had been just a dream. If it had, she would have been able to deal with the embarrassment it would have caused and eventually move on, but contrary to what she wanted, it had been so awfully real. So real she could still feel his big and strong hands roaming all over her body, she could still feel him sliding in and out of her with a strong pace, she could still feel the warmth of his body spread all over hers as she had the best sex she'd ever had in her entire life. 

She was more than a week late to her period when she forced herself to buy a pregnancy test. 

Her Italian had been at its worst and she had had to go with Trixie, so besides trying to successfully tell the woman at the pharmacy what she wanted, she also had to keep an eye on the nine-year-old that wanted to put her hands on everything colorful her eyes landed on, while also dealing with the sole fact she was actually buying a pregnancy test. That was something she'd last done nine years before. Oh, how she hoped that damned stick only had one line on it. 

Making herself take the test was an odyssey.

She'd peed in a cup like the instructions she'd translated with Google Translate had said, and the test was just blankly staring back at her, cap yet to be removed, as she overthought her mind out. On one side, she knew she had to do it because she just couldn't keep waiting for her period to arrive. She was awfully regular, so much that her period would always come at the same time of the day. Being more than a week late was atrocious. And yet... she really didn't want to juggle the choices and decisions she would have to make if that test came back positive. 

At last, half an hour after she peed in a tiny, plastic cup, she dipped the test for just short of five seconds. 

And because it seemed as if an elephant had taken a huge, proverbial crap on her and her life, the test came back positive. Strongly positive. 

The following months after that just blurred all into one painful, stressing, sad scene. 

Her body started to grow far quicker than it did back when she was pregnant with Trixie, and she couldn't help but wonder what kind of thing would come out of that. Ultrasounds all said the baby looked to be healthy and perfectly formed, growing steadily and thriving. It made Chloe nauseous to think that thing was living off of her, of the air she breathed, of the food she ate. At least in the very beginning, while she still dedicated the shortest amount of time possible to thinking of the fact that a couple of months from then she'd have the antichrist in her arms. 

Once she saw the miniature baby with a tiny, flickering heartbeat growing inside her stomach, some of the fear and overall aversion she felt towards it started to cease. Maybe it was the fact that it looked normal, or maybe the hormones were to blame. No one would know. Thing is, she was starting to get more comfortable with the idea, aversion and revulsion leaving some space for other emotions —debatably, more positive ones— to grow. She had been through so much during her first trimester, she just couldn't bring herself to care at one point.

She had sought for help, for guidance, for someone who knew more about this world she was now a part of than she did. Rome had beautiful, ancestral libraries, and both Italy's capital and The Vatican lent themselves to nurture Chloe with some of the timeless knowledge history had bestowed upon them. She made some decisions, chose between one thing or another, and just like that, she started to grow a posture for herself, a belief about everything she now knew that wasn't solely based off of fear. 

And that's how her months went by. A growing belly that held maybe Humanity's greatest fear. A nine-year-old that kept on jumping around the place, demanding to visit every single tourist attraction Italy had to offer. A mind that had gone back to being her own, that had finally allowed her to come to terms with what she saw, and how she felt about it. 

As the days became weeks, and the weeks months, and said months went by, Chloe realized it was time to go home. 

She had to think it through since the idea of staying in Italy indefinitely still sounded appealing, but she had a life she would want to keep after everything divinity-related was over. There were only so many days off she could take, and she was starting to go low on them. 

So, when her pregnancy hit twenty-nine weeks, Chloe and Trixie boarded a plane headed back to Los Angeles, to their home, and needless to say, it was a flight spent entirely on thinking and overthinking everything through. 

Being in Italy for so long had made her forget about the very few things she actually liked about LA, and her first three weeks back were spent relearning the place she was born in, while also trying to come to terms with the decision she'd have to make once the half-human half-demon baby she had growing inside her belly decided to come out. Only time would tell. 

That was something someone else had told himself back when the woman that meant so much to him just disappeared. 

Present day was just so dull without her, so monotone. He could easily map out how his day would be the moment he woke up, how things would turn out. There was no factor of surprise, nothing exciting he could hope for, nothing that actually gave his life a meaning. Every day was the same as the one before, often blurring together into a tight and gray mess of despair. It was all just a meaningless mixture of meaningless sex, meaningless crime-solving and just an overall meaningless existence.

The precinct had its usual murmur, a sound so familiar to him alongside to the smell of burnt coffee and body odor. Daniel was by his side, doing paperwork and going over background information they had gotten on their latest case, and everything just felt so normal. Not the normal he'd hope for, where Chloe Decker would walk down the stairs and towards her desk, ready to start a day with the devil by her side, but the kind of normal he now dreaded. The new normal. A normal that didn't include her. 

"Hey man. You okay?" Came Daniel's voice from his side, pulling him away from his spacing-out of pure misery, drawing him back to a present he didn't want to be a part of anymore. 

"Yes, sure. Why do you ask?" 

The topic of Chloe and how both of them felt about her sudden disappearance had left the table already. Months ago, however, it was the only thing they knew how to talk about. They had grown so close while missing her and Trixie, it was bound to happen that a connection was established between them. After all, they did have strong reasons to want to have Chloe in their lives. 

"You just... You seem more off than usual," Dan could be so caring, Lucifer had come to learn. After a couple of weeks of getting to know the man, he finally came across a spark of something that made him likable, and that's what had pushed him into starting a close friendship with him. 

"I'm..." his eyes drifted towards the stairs. They were so empty and yet so crowded at the same time. People were going up and down them, the world was moving on, spinning, yet... Those stairs felt empty because it wasn't her the one walking them down. 

"You still miss her, don't you?" Dan guessed. By the looks of it, Lucifer just seemed like a really sad devil guy, desperate for a sparkle of hope that would dim his longing, his suffering. 

"Understatement of the millennia," he scoffed, trying to desperately shove down all the feelings that had risen to the surface. He had been doing pretty well on his sad, deplorable mindset lately, but after every high there's always a low.

"You just keep hoping she'll walk through the door and everything's gonna go back to normal," Daniel stated. It was more prone to be a question, but the fact that both of them already kind of knew the answer made him phrase it as a statement. 

"Of course not. She now knows I never lied about my identity, if what your 'she found out something big and upsetting about you' is true. I mean... I do remember seeing her while I was laying half-conscious in the desert, so I suppose our theory of her seeing my wings is, in fact, true." That was what Lucifer and Dan had been able to come up with once the initial desperation of knowing where Chloe was and dealing with the wings' reappearance had worn off. Chances were, they were actually really close. "Nothing is ever going to go back to normal,"

"I just know... whatever it is that you feel for her is genuine. I can tell. So... she can't be that hard to reason with, I'm sure she'll be kinda like me and eventually accept it,"

"Dan, I'm afraid you might be on the wrong there. You didn't fly off to who-knows-where after I proved to you I'm the devil. Frankly, from the humans that know, you're the one that took it the best," and that had, in fact, taken Lucifer aback back in the day. He was truly not expecting Dan to be of the reasonable kind. 

"Actually, a lot of things just make more sense now that I'm in the know," Dan diverted his gaze towards the stairway Lucifer had been looking at. He, too, was hoping Chloe and his daughter would come back soon from Europe. He missed his little monkey more than she'll even know. "You just have to wait. Her whole life is in LA, she's bound to come back sometime,"

And just as those words left Daniel's mouth and Lucifer's gaze also diverted towards the stairway, the sight of a familiar pair of legs, dressed by a familiar pair of black skinny jeans made its way towards their eyes. 

She was as beautiful as the day she left. More, even, dare he say. She now had bangs and he truly didn't know what else she had done to her hair, but she truly looked as gorgeous as Earth had ever seen her. Her semblance was slightly uneasy, Lucifer could tell, but he honestly couldn't care less. Or his eyes were tricking him and he had stepped back into the realm of hallucinations and delusions, or Chloe Jane Decker was back in Los Angeles and his life was now back to being kind of what it was like before she left. 

However, between her beauty and her whole 'being a sight for sore eyes' vibe she carried, something else caught the devil's attention. 

Her abdomen was swollen. 

And he didn't have to be an expert on human physiognomy or anatomy to know what the reason for that was. 

"Hi guys!"


	2. Make Me Lose Control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR 500 HITS IN ONLY ONE CHAPTER! You guys are unbelievable and I truly don't deserve you!
> 
> Okay, so, when I tell you that writing this chapter made me cry, I mean it. It fucking destroyed me seeing Chloe and Lucifer like this, and I hope I was able to convey the feelings and emotions the way I wanted to. 
> 
> I hope you like these few words of mine, and if you do, please comment and give kudos. It takes nothing and it makes me the happiest girl on earth.
> 
> Remember to follow me on IG @crime_solvingdevil to see snippets of future works and teasers!
> 
> All my love, Rena.
> 
> P.S.: Next chapter's title is "Much too much" and lemme tell you, shit gets very real very fast.

Words? Of what use could they be?

Lucifer had been rendered the epitome of speechless. His brain couldn't process what he had seen, his mouth couldn't express it, his eyes couldn't believe it. There was nada, zilch, that could be said about Chloe's reappearance. 

"Hi, guys," she greeted them happily, waltzing in there as if the past six months hadn't happened, as if she hadn't left without an explanation. 

"Chloe! Oh my god, I missed you so much!" Daniel quickly jumped out of his desk chair and rushed to hug his ex-wife and friend, seemingly failing to notice the huge elephant in the room. "Don't you ever pull that on us again, you had me worried sick!"

"I know, I know, Dan. I'm sorry, I... I just needed to work through some issues and I thought... Might as well take some of my unused vacation days," she said, purposefully keeping her eyes from placing themselves on the tall, dark, handsome devil that was now behind Daniel. 

"How's Trix? Gosh, I missed her so much!" Daniel was, needless to say, ecstatic to have Chloe back. And so would be Lucifer... if only that baby bump weren't the only thing he could focus on. 

"She's great. She's been obsessing over gelato lately! It was so difficult to get her to leave Rome after she discovered that stuff,"

So, Rome huh? What could Chloe have possibly wanted to do with Europe? There was so much information headed Lucifer's way that it became overwhelming to try and process it all. Much like in a sensory overload, he stopped thinking, responding, understanding, even.

"Can I take her for a couple of days? I've missed my little monkey so much," and, thanks to the filter-less mouth to brain connection he had, he just ended up blurting out what he would normally say, only with his eyes fixated on the detective's enlarged stomach. 

"Tell me about it. The only thing he knew how to do was whine about how much he missed your spawn," and although Chloe tried her best to ignore it, to ignore the way that his all-too-Lucifer comment made her feel, she was unable to. She had to look up. She had to meet his eyes. 

"Hi, Lucifer..." and her voice kind of died down at the last syllable of his name. 

"Welcome back, Detective..." he said with his voice as bittersweet as it could possibly get, conveying all the emotions her return made him feel with an accuracy worthy of an ovation. "And company," and he really couldn't help it but let his eyes fall back down to where her stomach was, all plump and full of life. If he concentrated enough he could even hear the heartbeat of the spawn she had growing inside of her. "I take it Rome was a lot of fun, am I right?"

"Yeah, it was..." she trailed off, finally giving the devil enough attention to notice what his eyes were staring at, and how he seemed to feel about it. "Yeah,"

"Oh. Oh..." Dan finally seemed to catch up with what was actually happened, and when he looked at what Lucifer was looking, he, too, had a slight interval of confusion. "Wait. Chloe, you're pregnant?"

"I... I thought it was kinda obvious," she mumbled with her voice as small as it could possibly get, holding hands with herself right below her prominent abdomen. 

"How did that happen?" Daniel asked incredulously, momentarily forgetting about everything he had heard on Lucifer's end, forgetting about how the devil felt about the woman before them. 

"Yes, Detective. How did that happen?" Lucifer copied Dan, faking interest and sounding notoriously irritated. Of all the ways he had imagined their reunion, neither of those included finding her pregnant. 

"I..." she stuttered, not knowing what to say. "Actually, um... Lucifer? Can we... Maybe, um... Talk in private?" 

"Gladly," Lucifer said almost immediately, right at the same time Daniel seemed to catch onto what was happening and why his presence was no longer as welcomed as it used to be. They had a story together, and if Lucifer really felt everything he told him he did, then Chloe must also feel something for him too. A baby thrown in the middle of that already scary and unstable mixture could easily cause it to set off. 

"Okay, I... I'll just..." Dan said, desperately trying to get away so the tension around Lucifer and Chloe wouldn't suffocate him, too. 

"It's okay. Can we... There's an empty briefing room upstairs?" Chloe suggested, looking at Lucifer with wariness. She definitely wasn't used to looking at him like that. 

"After you," he, like the gentleman he was, allowed Chloe to walk in front of him. 

Chloe gave Dan a brief nod of acknowledgement before walking towards the staircase and upwards, feeling Lucifer's suffocating, enchanting presence breathing on her neck. He wasn't that close to her, actually. He was leaving a respectful, arm-length distance between them as they went upstairs, much too lost in his own mind to care about what his presence might be doing to her. All he knew was, in turn, what her presence was doing to him, and that was far more than enough. 

Upon reaching the empty briefing room, Lucifer closed the door behind his back. Being alone with Chloe once again was proving to be far more difficult than he ever anticipated, considering all the other times they had been left alone. He was seriously wondering how, once upon a time, they managed to ride in the same car and be fine, and now just sharing a decently sized room felt unbearably overwhelming, like the walls were closing in on them.

"So..." Chloe tried to start, already claiming the ownsership of the back half of the room, leaving the other one for Lucifer. Their presence was so suffocating for the other. 

"Italy, huh?" Lucifer said, unable to tear his eyes off of that bump, unable to stop the faint sound of a quick heartbeat from filling his ears and overwhelming him to the max. 

"Yeah... I just... I felt like I needed to just go away for a while, you know?" She didn't precisely seem afraid of him, although she kind of was. She looked to be awkward, more than anything. 

"Wonder why that is," Lucifer said, phrasing it like a statement although it was a question. "I don't know, feeling the need for an escapade is completely understandable." He started, feeling the need to walk closer to her, to make his presence more known. There was something boiling without control inside of him, something that was clawing at him, yearning for release, tearing him apart. Particularly, it was triggered by the sight of her swollen stomach, all full of life and with another heart in there that wasn't welcomed. "However," Chloe gulped. She had never seen Lucifer look so threatening before. Truth was, however, that the one that felt the most threatened was him. "Leaving without a day's notice and making careful bank movements and transactions, communicating with LA through remote addresses... I don't know. Feels like you were running away from something,"

"Well, I..." and she ran out of words. 

He knew. Ever since the thought of coming back crossed her mind, she took into consideration the possibility of Lucifer knowing the motive for her six month long escapade. However, she never expected him to actually know. He was far too close to completely knocked out when she found him and... Found out, there was no way he could remember. But then again, Lucifer had proven himself to be quite good at not being what, or rather whom, people expected him to be. 

"I'm assuming... Nay, I'm pretty positive that... You know," he tried to not sound threatening, he really did. If to Chloe everything that came out of his mouth was a threat, well... He couldn't be held accountable for that. "I mean, it's the only logical explanation I can give to you disappearing on us... On me, for over six months," 

"I just..." she wanted to say something so badly. Maybe for the sake of what had been an awesome partnership but maybe also the biggest lie in the universe, maybe for the sake of what she had once felt towards him. 

"You found me." Said Lucifer, still as a mouse. "When I got kidnapped and dumped in the desert, you found me. I knew you would," he was being so cautious with his words, with the way his body communicated his emotions, with the tone his deep voice held. "I remember seeing you there,"

"How?" Chloe blurred out. She would never admit it but her eyes had started stinging. She was so thankful for the relative darkness there was in that briefing room. The curtains were closed all the way, letting in just the right amount of light to make her feel just a little more comfortable. "You... You were knocked o-out, a-and... You had..." 

"What, my wings?" He finished the sentence for her, still trying to force Chloe's plump and round stomach out of his field of sight. "Better get used to them. These pesky little bastards seem to grow back, unlike my last pair," 

"What..." and then it dawned on her. He meant he had tried cutting them off. And it hadn't worked. How could she be expected to react reasonably to a revelation of that sort, how could someone expect her to understand? 

"You know, I..." but he stopped. He wanted to come clean, he wanted to be truly transparent for once, he really did. It was just so difficult to tell his full truth. "These past six months you weren't here, I... I spent them all imagining how our reunion would be. I... Imagining how you would take this," 

"Lucifer, I..." all those months of preparation, of coming to terms with the fact that her life in LA would have to resume eventually, and therefore she would have to talk to him, all of that just faded away. All that was left there was as raw as it could possibly get. She was terrified. 

"I'm disappointed to find out that you've lived up to my expectations," he turned around, already finding it too hard to face her as he spoke. He was feeling so much already and the elephant in the room was yet to be addressed. He truly didn't know how he would pull through that conversation. "I was really hoping you wouldn't."

"So what?" She said, trying to regain some of that essence of the strong woman she had always been, trying to glue her broken pieces back together. "What did you want me to do? How did you want me to react?" 

At that, he stays completely silent. 

"When... when you left me that voicemail about no more going backwards and finally coming clean with me, I waited for you. I waited until two in the morning because I knew how hard it was for you to open up to anyone," her voice had shaken a little, but she was able to regain control rather quickly. Lucifer remained completely silent in his end. "I got worried when after three days you wouldn't answer your phone and you wouldn't come back to work." She started again, trying to get him, the devil, to understand what she felt when she found out. "I tried tracking your phone but it said you were at Lux and you weren't... So I tracked you through the GPS you put on your ring," Lucifer remained as quiet as a mouse, still, barely breathing. "I drove up north for four freaking hours, Lucifer, worried sick about you, thinking about all the different scenarios I could find you in." She took a deep breath in, preparing herself for her next words. "I'm sorry if finding you burnt, unconscious and with a pair of fucking angel wings sticking out of your back made me feel a little overwhelmed,"

The devil sighed, finally giving signs of actually paying attention. 

"You have no idea how glad I am that someone whacked me in the head and left me there," he mumbled, with his voice small. "I wouldn't have been able to see you walk out on me the way you did if I had actually told you willingly." He slowly turned around, afraid to face her eyes, afraid to see her. Her reaction had broken him so much already, he didn't want to be broken anymore. "You do know that you found out in one of the best ways possible, don't you?"

"What do you mean?" Chloe was heavily confused. So, there were worse ways of finding out that Heaven and Hell were a thing than finding your partner with wings coming out of his back in the middle of California's desert?

"When I said I wanted to tell you everything, I meant everything I was back then," he slowly walked closer to the huge table that separated them, wary and careful of Chloe's reaction. "That wouldn't have included angel wings. It would've been just bloody old me, the once upon a time brightest of all angels burned by hellfire,"

"You would've shown me your true form..." she realized, fearing the mere image her mortal brain could master inside her head. 

"That is not my true form." He stated, pausing with every word to hammer his point across, to let her know how much it pained him that she saw him as a monster. If she caught on, she wouldn't tell. "This is my true form. This is who I am. And you know what? I'm glad you took it the way you did. It's shown me that you, too, weren't this amazing being I made you out to be,"

"Excuse me?" And she felt it. She felt it sting in her chest the moment those words came out of his mouth. After all, the devil never lies. However, the one that had been lying ever since the day started had been her mind, for she had told herself she wouldn't let her feelings get the best of her and they had already done so. 

"Oh, I think you heard it quite alright. I have no problem repeating myself, though." He was shielding himself again, hiding behind his mask of a strong man that would never let his emotions rise to the surface. "I may be the devil, yes, but you're no angel yourself,"

"How dare you!" And there it went, the tiniest amount of composure left inside that room, flying freely out of the window. 

"Oh yes, I dear!" The devil seconded, adding wood to the fire. 

"Lucifer, how can you not even have the smallest amount of sympathy?" She reproached, unconsciously trying to hold on to the devil she knew, to the image of her partner. At least, to what was left of him. "I found out that Heaven and Hell are a thing, that... That my partner is the devil! How did you expect me to react to that?"

"Honestly? Better than this," he turned to face the door, finding the blue of her eyes to be far too painful to stare into. "Hell, even Daniel took it better,"

"You know what? Sorry, okay? Sorry that I took my time, the time I deserved, to come to terms with the fact that the man I..." and it almost slipped out. Almost. "That the man that I've been working with for the past year is the devil, and that... Fuck, I slept with you, Lucifer!"

"What? I have it on good authority that you had an amazing time." And he was smug when he said that, quickly adapting to his usual persona. He was glad that if she'd done so much to hurt him, at least the fact that they'd had sex would weigh on her. "The only difference between me and the poor chap that got you... with... with child, is that I'm positive you had a far better time with me than you did him," he almost lost it in the middle. As he turned around, his eyes failed not to land on the detective's round and large stomach, proof that indeed, she was a carrier of life. 

"Are you seriously... You're seriously... You're unbelievable!" How could he be so blind? All Chloe knew was that, devil or not, that man still managed to make her lose her temper. 

"Let me remind you that you were the one that fled on me and got knocked up. That seems far more unbelievable to me," his remarks were slowly but surely gaining back the tone he used for almost everything, showing Chloe how easily he could shove himself back into the man she thought she knew. "I don't blame you. I know for a fact that Italian men are irresistible, so... When in Rome..." but he was, indeed, blaming her. 

"You seriously think that while I was out of the country with my nine-year-old daughter, having an existential and self crisis, that I would... That I would go out and have sex with random men, and on top of that not use protection?" She was outraged, to say the least. She was far too deep into the whole 'I had sex with the devil and now I'm carrying his baby' thing to even think of going out and have sex with other men. 

"Well, that would be my course of action, yes," To say that Chloe was exasperated was putting it mildly. 

"Well, it definitely wouldn't be mine," she sighed loudly, trying to keep all the awful words she had at the tip of her tongue from escaping. "Just so you know... I'm eight months pregnant. Ring a bell?" Maybe the smartest thing would be to let him believe she'd gotten knocked up by a random Italian stranger and move on with their lives, but she still wasn't sure of the abilities and powers of the creature she had inside her womb. If she was planning on ever getting advice from Amenadiel (granted he was actually Lucifer's brother and therefore an angel), then Lucifer would have to know.

"So? Honestly, I couldn't care less," she was so close to losing it. 

"Let me spell it out for you. I'm precisely thirty-two weeks and three days pregnant. You are seriously telling me you can't put two and two together," breathing in and out as slowly as possible was her only hope. 

"And? If you have something to tell Daniel, I'm not going to do it for you," doing quick math in his brain, around eight months before was when Chloe and Dan started their divorce. He would definitely not be telling Dan if he was having another spawn, he was so not into pregnancy reveals. 

"You seriously have to be dumb," right at that moment, besides feeling like she might burst from the exasperation, she felt slightly endeared. The innuendo was so simple and yet Lucifer wasn't catching on. "This baby is yours, Lucifer," 

And he laughed. Loudly. A sound Chloe had most likely never heard before. And he stopped... eventually, once he saw Chloe's slightly-more-than-usual-annoyed face drop from there to an I-am-really-annoyed-right-now level. 

"Are you done?" She said sternly once Lucifer's laughter died down. 

"That's preposterous! There is no way in either Hell, Heaven or Earth that thing you have in there is mine," he said, still amused by the fact that Chloe thought he could fall for something like that. 

"Oh, come on, you must have hundreds of kids running around. You've slept with half of LA, you have to have gotten someone pregnant before!" Chloe couldn't tell if their conversation was going back to being like they used to or not. Just to be sure, though, she kept her semblance impassible. 

"It seems like the one that needs a little bit of spelling out here is you, Detective," he started, almost back to being himself. "I'm the devil, right?" Chloe nodded. "So... I'm an angel, then,"

"Debatable," to her mind, he was no angel, nor would he ever be. 

"Well, I am. I'll show you my wings any time," he sighed, growing slightly exasperated himself. "So... if I'm an angel, it means I'm not human. And if I'm not human then it means I'm entirely not of your species, therefore, we can't have viable offspring. It's basic, inductive reasoning, Detective." 

"That can't be, Lucifer. I haven't had sex with anyone but you in the past year," Lucifer made a small grimace. 

"Well, that's sad," yeah, being back to being himself was just what he needed. He'd shown himself in one of his most vulnerable expressions back then, and he would make sure he never did that again. 

"Lucifer, I'm being serious. This baby is yours," she insisted, but Lucifer remained in his signature posture and expression. 

"Detective, if you need economical help to sustain your new offspring, you could have started there. Not that I'm actually going to comply, given, well... Given everything that's gone down between us. You would have saved us a lot of time by going straight to the point," he did know about the existence of child support. He had been slightly taken aback by his own conclusion since Chloe never seemed like the kind of woman that would resort to that kind of things, but then again, she had also seemed to be the kind of woman you could count on and confide in. Evidence proved the exact opposite. 

"You are unbelievable!" She was so fucking close to losing it.

"I believe you've said that already, and whilst I don't disagree, you'll have to start digging up newer qualifiers,"

"You want proof this kid is yours?!" She came close to yelling, slamming her palms of the table and trying to make her presence known to him. 

"That would certainly be helpful. Although I seriously doubt you're able to come up with something that will actually make me believe..." and as he was phrasing his idea, his mind suddenly stopped working. 

His eyes followed her movements, and everything that went down played like in slow motion inside his head.

First, her eyes fell on one of the wine glasses that was on the table. The room was perfectly accommodated for a conference or a meeting to happen at any moment, so each place around the table had an empty glass. Then, she proceeded to grab it and, without a single care in the world and without giving anyone a warning, she smashed it against the table, shattering it into a million pieces. 

Lucifer was already at a loss for words with her initial outburst, but when his eyes caught her picking up one decently sized, sharp shred of glass, it finally dawned on him what she was intending to do. 

She was far too quick, far too efficient. 

She brought the shred of glass up to her inner wrist and slid it against her pale and spotless skin, the skin Lucifer once knew to be so warm and welcoming. She put pressure on it, she slid it with intent of harming herself, with the intent of proving her point. 

And when Lucifer was about to freak out because a mortal could easily die from a cut of the sort, and he sort of still cared about her far too much to let her die, everything went still. 

Not even a droplet of blood oozed out of the cut. Not even a cut was made in the first place.

Like a puzzle, Lucifer's mind was falling back into place, slowly shifting from his initial state of fear and terror to allowing the meaning of what he had just seen sink in. There was no blood. None. On a cut that would have killed any other human in maybe less than a minute. 

"I... I don't know much about how celestials work, but... I'm guessing you guys are immortal," Chloe sighed, placing the shred of glass back on the table with a lot of care. It was really shocking seeing the contrast between how she'd grabbed the shred and tried to basically kill herself, and now was putting it back on the table with such a delicate manner, careful of its edges. "And I'm also guessing this baby may have made me immortal too? I really don't know,"

"You should be dead," Lucifer mumbled, almost completely out of breath. He had just witnessed how Chloe reacted to a sharp object penetrating her skin the same way he would —in most circumstances, at least—. 

"Does the fact that I'm not mean anything to you?" She asked, trying to keep to herself how much it pained her to be in that situation. She knew it would be for the better good, but still... It could be so hard. 

"Of course it does!" 

And there it went. The last bit of sanity the devil was holding onto, the last shred of composure just vanishing away. 

That thing growing inside of Chloe's womb was of his making. His child. Those were certainly words he never thought would cross his mind, much less his mouth. How on earth had that happened? To what extent was Chloe able to affect him? 

"Of course it does!" Needless to say, he was freaking out. He was the furthest thing from a dad the universe had to offer, and he was seriously holding on to the hope that Chloe wouldn't expect him to actually... Just thinking of becoming a parent was sending a shiver down Lucifer's spine. "Detective, I... Chloe, I can't be a father!"

"Why won't you even... Why are you so sure about that?" Chloe tried to remain calm, or at least go back to something resembling tranquility. If she accomplished that or not, she honestly couldn't know. 

"Angels can't procreate," he insisted, looking for the most reasonable explanation, wanting to understand why Chloe didn't bleed to death without assuming that the creature she was growing was a celestial. 

"Would you want me to give the broken glass another try?" Lucifer was freaking out, and Chloe honestly had no idea what to do. She had been called a whore, she had been put under the spotlight for taking her time to accept the fact that her partner was the devil, and now she was dealing with Lucifer not accepting the fact that they were having a child together? That was far too much for anyone, not only her. 

"No, no... Just..." he slammed his hands against his own thighs, growing restless and feeling the instinctive need to flee. "Bloody hell! This is all your doing, isn't it?!" He shouted, looking up at the ceiling with an anger so great and profound within his eyes, borderline crying. "When will it be enough for you?!" 

"Lucifer..." Chloe tried, completely unable to walk a mile in his shoes and actually understand what he was going through. 

"First you make me... you make me..." his voice died down, though the intensity and weight of his words didn't. He just couldn't bring himself to say those last five words that were begging to be let out inside his head, inside his heart. "And now this?! You cruel, manipulative bastard!" 

"Lucifer, you need to..." And Chloe actually tried to approach him. Maybe for old time's sake, maybe because she could see her partner was hurting, maybe because she couldn't go against her principles and needed to help him. 

"Shut up!" He silenced her, stopping her midway through her second step, freezing her in place. "Just... Just..." and then, sort of realizing what he had done and sort of regretting it, he gave one last angry look at the ceiling and bolted, leaving Chloe alone with the remnants of what had once been a wine glass. 

And that's when the tears started falling. 

She'd been left alone. She'd been left to fend for herself. She'd been left with her growing baby and her own thoughts. 

Honestly, she had been expecting Lucifer to react negatively to the news about his impending fatherhood, she really had. However, expecting something and seeing it become a reality were things that were far too different to be compared. 

"I'm so sorry," she mumbled, bringing both of her hands to cup her round, big belly, rubbing it softly as the small kicks of her unborn child made her company. "I'm so sorry that you have to come into a world like this, I'm so sorry I couldn't even give you a father," she felt so alone at that moment. Completely adrift, defenseless. "You don't deserve this, baby, I'm so sorry," 

She was so used to the kicking and rolling around that most of the time it went by unnoticed. However, now that the guilt of everything was sinking in, she could feel the presence of those she hurt, and would be hurting the most. 

"Maybe it's for the better, you know?" She mumbled softly, going over the tiny bulge that her belly button made on her tee-shirt. "Maybe... Maybe if you grow up away from him, away from all this craziness, maybe you can... Maybe you'll never know. I'd give everything to go back to not knowing," she talked to her son or daughter, to the baby that was nothing more than that, just a baby. It wasn't the antichrist, it wasn't a mutant, it was just a tiny, defenseless baby. "I promise you, honey, you'll only need your sister and I. We're more than enough," 

She had finally reached the point where she truly couldn't know what to expect from Lucifer anymore. It was just completely unpredictable, her and her baby's future was completely unforeseeable. She was scared, terrified, utterly frightened of what the future would entail and what her child would be able to do. 

Her only hope was that maybe, if Lucifer chose to stay away and she managed to get a hold of herself before her baby arrived, maybe then the child would grow up in an environment normal enough that everything that took part in Chloe's vilest nightmares would just stay that way. Nightmares. 

She could only hope.


	3. Much too much

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG YOU ARE UNBELIEVABLE! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR 1000+ HITS AND ALMOST 100 KUDOS! YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST!
> 
> I wanna say I'm sorry for leaving y'all hanging with last chapter's ending but I felt it was necessary. Besides, it's not like I can post a chapter right after I finish writing it like I used to do with She's Got The Devil's Eyes. University life is kicking my butt hehe.
> 
> Soooo, I've got some news!
> 
> My good friend Chany28, aka Karen, is going to be beta-reading Devil May Care! Katie got me used to having someone proof read my stuff before posting it that now I just felt far too insecure to post something without it going under a native speaker's revision first. Let's say all a big Thank You to Karen for keeping Devil May Care without all the stupid mistakes I usually make!
> 
> Without further adieu, I leave you to chapter three, where Chloe and Lucifer may or may not (emphasis on may not) resolve their issues!
> 
> All my love, Rena.
> 
> P.S: next chapter’s title is “My Lucky Charm”

Where Lucifer was? No one would know. 

Ever since their awful conversation, Lucifer had gone AWOL, and everyone knew that if he didn’t want to be found, then he wouldn’t be. There had been so much inside his head, so much pain, hatred. Every negative emotion a human can think of had gone through his head, all towards his father, some towards the fact that Chloe was pregnant and it was, indeed, with his child. He wasn't ready, he didn't want it, he would never want it. 

The fact that Chloe ran away now meant so much more because, in doing so, she also got to keep that not so little secret from him, at least for long enough that nothing could be done about it. If human methods of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy would even work in a half-celestial child, that is. 

His head was a blubbering mess of despair, anger, sadness, uncertainty, but more than that, he was disappointed, hurt, completely disempowered. He had been left forlorn yet another time, only that this once, at least, being on his own had been his decision. No one could take that away from him. 

He felt the need to think. He needed the initial chaos to pass so he could deal with the havoc said chaos would leave behind. He needed as much space as he could possibly get, he needed to be alone. That was why he flew himself to north Canada immediately after leaving the precinct, taking nothing but the clothes he was wearing and the money inside his pockets. If only coming to terms with everything Chloe's pregnancy and 'vacation' meant were as easy as unfurling his wings and flying himself out of the country. 

It wasn't as if things back in Los Angeles were any better, though. 

Don't get her wrong, Chloe was thankful she didn't have to face Lucifer for the following weeks, she really was. She just had to deal with that minuscule part of her that was still kind of hoping Lucifer would go about her pregnancy nicely. It was pathetic, really, but there was something in her that just wanted Lucifer to do things the right way, and end up happily ever after. Those were the remnants of the woman that had once come close to falling in love with the devil. She had been the one to do all the thinking for those last three weeks, the one that actually got a broken heart after that ghastly conversation. 

"How do you do it, Dan?" 

She had resorted to her ex-husband, seeking guidance. She just needed to understand, to not feel afraid anymore. 

She knew Dan had found out when, upon having Lucifer walk away from her, he came to meet her and found her crying inside that briefing room; the broken wine glass still shattered over the wooden table. He'd been the one to help her get back on her feet, to sort of hold her together after that initial shock, after the version of herself that actually felt something for Lucifer took over and managed to bring her to her knees. They didn't say a word for around half an hour, but the conversation that followed after that let Chloe know that she wasn't alone, that there were other humans that also knew. 

In those three weeks, Chloe felt as accompanied and cherished as never before, and yet she had never felt so alone. 

Linda and Dan would meet with her almost on a daily basis to talk about divinity with her, to help her clear her doubts and hopefully ease her fears. Having Lucifer away actually helped with that, and she was thankful that even when everything was falling apart between them, they still managed to keep in sync. Sort of. 

"I was just as lost as you are when I found out, Chlo," Dan explained, resting his hip on the wall right besides Chloe's desk as his ex-wife took a break from the case she was working on. Solving the murder of a woman that took part in a reality tv show like The Cabin had been proven to be hard without her partner and without any new leads. 

"Yeah, but... You seem to be so alright with it. How can you believe him?" They had talked about it. Countless times. And yet... Chloe still found it hard to believe that both Dan and Linda were genuinely alright with Lucifer being the Lord of Hell. 

"He never lies, Chloe," and that was a truth that had definitely eased Daniel's mind.

"How can you know that, huh?" She insisted, wasting her break on dealing with the fact that angels were a thing now, much like she had been doing for the past twenty days. "What if that's the biggest lie he's ever told?"

"Look, I know what you're going through, and I know neither of you want to, but you guys need to talk." It was surprising, to say the least, but out of everyone that knew, Dan was being the most reasonable one. That was saying something. 

"I don't think that's a possibility. He's fled the country, I know it," she didn't actually know it, but she'd checked for bank account movements within the US borders and since their last encounter there had been none. Lucifer couldn't live without spending huge amounts of money, so he was most likely not within the US. 

"Talk about communication issues. Whenever you guys have a problem with each other you just leave? That's not healthy," Chloe stayed silent at Daniel's remark, thinking that, on some level, he was actually kind of right. "Look, you'll just have to wait a bit. He'll come back eventually,"

And as if Dan had invoked him, the pair of ex-spouses watched as the devil strode into the precinct, greeting everyone much like he used to do just three weeks before, proudly wearing his mask. If only humanity knew what was behind it. He looked awfully cheerful, too like himself, and it angered Chloe a little bit. She'd been crying her eyes out for months, not knowing what to do, all for someone who wouldn't even bother to show a fraction of his true emotions. 

"Good morning, Dan." He greeted his partner upon reaching him and Chloe, smiling widely and actually seeming as if those last three weeks hadn't happened. "Detective," he cordially greeted her, eyeing her and letting the tiniest bit of something show through his awfully cheerful eyes. Aside from that, he was his usual, devilish self. 

"Hi man," Dan greeted him as if Chloe wasn't present, patting the devil's arm like he usually would. 

"Lucifer..." her tone was inquisitive but not quite, having a small semblance to the tone she would use whenever she found Lucifer doing inappropriate things that went further than his day to day standards. "You're back," she stated, far too nervous all of a sudden. 

Silence settled around them like a thick layer of fog, making them unable to see past the tension. 

"Okay... I think that's my cue." Dan mumbled, letting the awkwardness get to him. "Chlo, remember what we talked about," he said before leaving Chloe to fend for herself. She had taken so long to jump out of the proverbial nest and fly on her own that he felt like he had to push her. For the sake of their friendship and herself. 

Daniel's body cut through the invisible fog that had settled around them, and all too suddenly Chloe had been left alone with a man she couldn't tell how she felt about anymore. Everything was so different, so out of their 'normal'

"So... you're back..." the need to scold him for going AWOL on her was there, which was kind of weird. She wasn't expecting herself to react to his Luciferness the same way she would before she found out. It was itching at her, begging to be let out. 

"I am," the awkwardness was unbearable. It was like they didn't know each other anymore. "I... I thought about leaving Los Angeles indefinitely but... Well, my life is here."

"I see,” she mumbled, trying to concentrate on anything that wasn't the way his sandalwood and vanilla perfume made its way towards her nostrils and threatened to melt her into a puddle of human goo. Why did the devil have to smell so good? Why did she have to still be afraid of him? "So... uhm... what were you..." she wanted to ask something, anything, but her brain seemed to have melted inside her head. 

"I was thinking..." his eyes diverted towards her swollen stomach, and Chloe did not miss the slight hint of disgust that painted his chocolate pools as they landed on the place their child was, comfortably snuggled up and waiting for his or her due date to come out. "We need to talk," she was so glad he'd been the one to say those four little words. 

"I know," she sighed, bringing her hands to her belly and suddenly feeling all too overwhelmed by his presence. The part of her that wanted her child to have nothing to do with him was gnawing at her, begging her to leave and never look back, whereas the part of her that still saw Lucifer as the man she used to know, was thinking it wouldn't be so bad if she stayed around.

"Look, Detective, I know you're afraid. Of me... Of everything going on," his eyes once again diverted towards her stomach, coating his eyes with an almost unreadable look. "Of that creature inside of you, I understand." Chloe sighed nervously. "Which is why we need to settle some ground rules so we can both keep our lives here in Los Angeles without causing any trouble,"

"You… You want to talk about this here? At the precinct?" She asked, letting herself be carried through the conversation, not trusting herself to say anything. In the state she was in, she would most likely regret every single word that came out of her mouth if she dared speak. 

"Of course not," he said matter-of-factly. He swiftly accommodated his suit jacked before speaking again. "Drop by Lux tonight at seven. It'll be far more private," 

Chloe must have given him a distraught look, a look of fear, something that came close to resembling how she truly felt. Truth be told, not even she knew how she felt about divinity anymore. She didn't know how she felt about Lucifer, and she didn't know if she'd ever manage to stop feeling that way. Unknown or not, her feelings were being far too inconvenient. 

"Fear not, Detective. I won't get my claws out and dismember you if that's what you're afraid of," he had attempted for it to sound like his normal self, like everything going on with him and Chloe wasn't affecting him. He failed spectacularly.

"I..." she truly didn't know what to say. She was really afraid of everything she didn't understand, and among that was Lucifer himself, his nature and motives. 

"Penthouse at seven then." He said with his usual tone, erasing the last bits of anything that gave away how he truly felt. 

"Okay," she mumbled as she watched him walk away, of course, not before giving her a respectful nod as a way of saying 'goodbye'. 

She had a dreadful day ahead of her. How she was going to keep herself from overthinking for the next ten hours?

* * *

Ironically enough, the ride in the elevator was the moment of her day that lasted the longest. Maybe it was her brain going too fast, so much that it managed to physically stop time around her. She wouldn't know. She wouldn't care. She just wanted to be over with everything that entailed Lucifer. 

"It's okay, honey. I promise you won't become what the world thinks you'll become," she talked to her unborn child, picturing an image of her future a year or two down the road.

She didn't know what she was having, both gender-wise and in species. She was truly blind to what was blossoming inside her womb, to the little creature that a bit over a month from then would be welcomed into the world. However, she did have an image of her future, a construction purely built out of her expectations and plans. 

At night, she would lay in bed, close her eyes, and imagine what her future would be like. She envisioned Trixie carrying a little boy, barely a toddler, and playing with him. An odd sense of normalcy wrapped itself around them, allowing her to forget the nature of her imaginary son, allowing her to think about all the things her future would entail, everything within normal, human standards. 

And then, at last, the doors opened, pulling her out of her daydream. 

The devil was on the same spot she would always expect him to be: sitting at his piano. The melody his fingers were graciously playing was something she'd never heard before, an array of notes that she'd never think would go well together but surprisingly enough they did. It seemed to be not of this world, too magnificent to have been created by a human. 

He didn't immediately realize the doors to his home had been opened. He was too immersed in the sight of his scotch glass and cigarette, letting his fingers wander over the keys of his beautiful piano and bring him to a time before rebellion, before everything went to waste. His suit jacket and vest were nowhere to be seen, leaving the sight of his muscular and tender back to be covered only by the sheer fabric of a white linen shirt; sleeves rolled up to his elbows. 

Taking a deep breath and letting out a proportionally large sigh, she walked out of the elevator, yet to be noticed by the handsome devil. He, too, was lost inside his own bubble of peace. 

Being almost as nervous as she had ever been, and as swiftly as her almost thirty-six-week baby bump allowed her to, she sat right next to the devil, finally catching his attention. 

"Detective," he greeted her, slightly surprised by her course of action. He made quick work of sliding himself to the left, giving Chloe enough space to sit comfortably. 

"Hi," she mumbled, looking at the keys of the piano instead of the man sitting beside her. "So..." the awkwardness was palpable. 

"Right, straight to the main course it is." He commented, standing up and making a beeline to his bar with the intent of refilling his glass. That and getting away from the one human ever that made him feel all sorts of welcome and unwelcome things. "I'd offer you a drink but I've heard pregnant women aren't supposed to have alcohol. It's up to you, though," 

"What did you want to talk about?" She asked, surprised by how steady her voice had sounded. She made a quick effort of turning herself around, wanting to face the devil. He walked over to the piano, placing his newly refilled glass of scotch on top of it and putting on his invulnerable mask. 

"I... well, I wanted to address the elephant in the room," he said, pointing and looking at Chloe's swollen abdomen. "Formally, I mean. And also..." he trailed off, giving her a small sigh. "This isn't the first time a human finds out... Particularly about me. So... I wanted to let you know that, should you have any questions, I shall be happy to answer each and every one of them," 

"What... What made you come to that conclusion?" Chloe asked tentatively. "I mean... You are definitely known for acting impulsively. This seems… Oddly mature," she wanted to forget she was talking to the devil. She wanted to stop walking on eggshells. She wanted things to go back to something resembling normal. 

"Well... Those are the perks of therapy. If you actually listen to what your therapist has to say, it can be... Insightful," odd, but welcomed nonetheless. 

"So, about the baby, I..." she wanted to get done with it already. And she also didn't. She felt so torn it was easy to forget she had found out almost seven months before. "Lucifer, you don't have to..."

"Oh, I know," he hadn't heard what she wanted to say, but he kind of already knew what she meant. "However, I... Look, Detective, all my life I've always despised children. As an archangel, as the devil, as both of them. You surely must know that I've been alive far longer than any human mind can conceive, even yours," he took a sip of his poison, his favorite scotch, hinting at Chloe's miracleness but without actually telling her. It would be far too much for her mind to handle. 

"I see," she mumbled, looking up at him. "So, what you're saying is..."

"I want nothing to do with the spawn," and he didn't bite it back, he didn't mask it a little before letting it all out, he just said it as it came to his mind. 

Chloe felt both heartbroken and relieved. 

A part of her was stupidly hoping that he would turn his life around for her and their child and fulfill her stupid dream of having a happy little family. Her, him, Trixie and their new baby, just like her heart was screaming at her. Her heart was convinced that things ought to be that way. 

And while her heart was shattering to pieces so small it was beyond repair, her mind had just let out the loudest, biggest sigh of relief. At least she wouldn't have to deal with having to push him back, and she'd get to fulfill her dream of raising her son or daughter away from Lucifer in order to keep it from becoming the antichrist. She just couldn't have it both ways, and as the woman of logic she was, she would always choose her mind over her heart. 

"Alright," however, her mumble was the furthest thing from the strong, sure and determined 'alright' she had wanted to say. "Aren't you... I don't know, a little interested in it at least? From what I know, this kid is the first ever half-human half-celestial being to ever exist," and there it was, her heart's hope. 

"Don't get me wrong, I am. I really am interested in it," he kept the word 'worried' off the table. New things always came with new implications. "I just... I think it'll be in the child's best interest, and yours too, if I stepped back from my parental duties and allowed you to take those on," 

"So... Essentially you want to still be a part of my life but not of our child's?" Truth be told, it made sense in both their heads. 

"Not quite. I... I do want to keep being a part of your life, should you allow me to. And I also want to be part of the spawn's life... But not as a father figure," he didn't seem too sure of his stance towards the existence of their child. "Believe me when I say that it's best for everyone if I keep that child at arm’s length. Much like I do with your spawn," 

"Okay..." she sighed, kind of content with his answer and kind of not. She was so done with not knowing what she wanted, the measures she'd take. "So, it's settled then. You're uncle Lucifer,"

"I think 'uncle Lucifer' is overdoing it a little," he actually chuckled at the title, and for a fraction of a second Chloe had hope that things would go back to normal. And then he stopped, and all her fears came rushing back. "I will, however, meet my economical responsibilities. I'm aware that raising a child is nothing short of ridiculously expensive so... Actually, I have something for you. Wait a second," and he left her alone in his living room, rapidly going to his bedroom. 

All too suddenly, being alone in there and having Lucifer's scotch glass within reach made her purse feel heavier. She had a pretty strong guess on what could be making it feel that way. 

She reached inside of it, pulling out a vial that could easily belong to a horror movie, containing what Father Kinely had said to be a sedative strong enough to knock out the devil. It was there. In her hand. His glass of whiskey was within reach. She could do it. 

She uncapped the vial, picturing her son or daughter inside her head and thinking of them, thinking of how great their life would be if Lucifer were to be forced back to Hell. She tried to think of them running around a big, green backyard, coming across a field of clovers and trying to find one with four leaves, telling her they loved her. She tried to imagine him or her as the opposite of the antichrist, as a good and caring being despite them being the devil's child. 

Her hand made its way towards the devil's glass, shaking vigorously as she found it hard to come to terms with what she was about to do. She could do it; she could build a better future for her baby. 

And then, through her mind rushed a compilation of her and Lucifer's greatest hits. She saw him when they first met, she saw him when they finally agreed on their partnership, she saw his smug and not always so smug smile flash through her head, she saw the depth of his eyes as he made love to her like no one else had, all as the neck of the vial was slowly tipped over the glass. 

She then saw him in their morning after. 

She heard him ask whether she was cold or not, given that Hell was supposed to freeze over. She also felt him kiss her neck vigorously after saying 'I also know you're ticklish'. She heard herself laugh. She felt his raspy stubble as she ran her index finger from his cheek, over his lips and towards his chin, asking him what he wanted to have for breakfast. 

Now, how could have evil incarnate managed to make a woman of reason feel that way? How could it be that the devil, of all people, had managed to bring the brightest smiles out of her, in a time where no one else could?

Her hand knocked the glass over quickly enough, not letting any of the contents of the vial spill inside his drink. 

She quickly capped the vial and placed it back inside her purse, feeling tense and regretting what she had been about to do. Maybe Father Kinley was right when he said Lucifer was magnetic and managed to make you feel like no one else had, but how could she be expected to throw all of that out of the window? How could she be expected to keep hurting him after she saw how badly he'd felt while she was in Italy? It had all been in his eyes, it was always there. 

"Lucifer," she said softly when he came back into the room, trying to read how Lucifer would react before the broken glass. "I... I... I'm sorry," she apologized nervously, trying to make something of the broken pieces of glass. It seemed like broken glassware was their thing now. 

"I'll get it," he tried to stop her, coming into her field of view and placing a small piece of paper on the other side of the piano. "No, I've got it, Detective." He insisted when he saw Chloe keep trying to clean the small mess. "Don't worr— Ow!" He yelped the moment a shred of glass cut the heel of his hand, drawing blood out of the wound. Much like every time Chloe was around, he became infuriatingly vulnerable. "Damn," he brought his hand up to his mouth to suck on his wound and hopefully make it stop bleeding. 

"You're bleeding," Chloe noted, letting her detective show. 

"Oh, I'm fine, I'm fine," Lucifer assured her, walking towards the bar to try and do something about his cut. 

"You're... You're bleeding," she repeated. Taken aback was not enough to describe how shocked she was. 

"I'm fine," he insisted. 

"You're bleeding and no. No, it’s not fine," she stood up and walked towards him with determination; her mind set on something. He turned around to face her, watching her as she was panting in disbelief. "It's... You know what? Yes, I do have a question for you." She said strongly, looking up at him with tears already starting to form and coat her eyes. "How is it that you walk inside a room with poisoned air to save two kids from a serial killer and get out without a scratch, but right now you are bleeding?" She sighed, panting from how much it took out of her to speak her truth to him. "You almost died when Malcolm shot you in the gut. This kid..." she grabbed her swollen belly to hammer her point across. "This kid, your kid, is making me invulnerable to anything, I... shot you! I shot you and I felt horribly about that, by the way. But what... is this?!" Her tears were gathering so quickly it was blurring her vision, but she just couldn't stop. She needed it. "Is anything even real with you? Were... Were you trying to manipulate me? Were you trying to make me feel bad? Is this all to make me care about you more?" Whether it was all a lie or not, the pain would always be real. 

"No," Lucifer said, astonished by her outburst. 

"Then what? How is it that you sometimes get hurt and other times you don’t? What is the difference?" She said, tiring herself out from her outburst, feeling her belly tighten just the way it would whenever she was too stressed. 

"You are, Detective." Chloe gasped slightly at his words. Not only because of what he said but because of how he said it. The softness in his voice was palpable, it was almost welcoming. "I don't fully understand why, but... I'm only vulnerable when I'm close to you,"

And then. Then her phone chimes, breaking once again their moment. She didn't know whether to be thankful for it or not. 

She called Ella immediately, much like her text said, and got the new information from the autopsy report that said that Melinda hadn't been killed with a rock like they thought, but with something heavy and rectangular, shaped like a brick. The picture of a certain camera man changing batteries came to Chloe's mind as Ella described the murder weapon, and she just knew. It had been him; it hadn't been Kylie. 

"Where... Where are you going?" Lucifer asked when he saw her leave towards the elevator, barely after hanging up. Chloe didn't answer. "Detective..."

"No, no, no," she stopped him in his tracks. "I think I should do this on my own. For now,"

"But, Detective, you're pregnant! It's dangerous, you can't go alone," he argued, following her nonetheless and standing in the elevator's doorway, keeping it from shutting its doors. 

"Lucifer, I... I can't be around you. Not now," she sighed, being honest to the devil, being far too overwhelmed by what she almost did and what his vulnerability around her meant. 

"What if something happens to you?" He said, voice significantly softening. 

"Nothing will happen to me, okay? I still have a month to go, I just have to go look for more evidence," She looked up at him, meeting his ever so expressive chocolate pools and finding nothing but genuine concern. Oh, how she wished she could know what was going through his mind. "I'll be fine. Please..." and with that, the devil reluctantly stepped back, holding the detective's gaze until the doors shut between them. He would never push her into something she didn't want to do, or wasn't sure about, and she didn't want to go to the crime scene with him. 

However, just a brief couple of minutes after Chloe's departure he was left wondering. 

There was this feeling inside his chest, something constrictive in all the wrong places, something that was clawing at him, begging to know about Chloe, to be there with her. He had never been one to actually listen to something as dumb as emotions were, and yet, this one was so overwhelming it spread throughout his entire body, making each and every cell in his body ache to know if Chloe would truly be okay. 

Maybe it was just a hunch, a gut feeling of sorts, but all too suddenly he needed to be there, he needed to go after her. 

And so, grabbing the missing jacket to his three-piece suit and the keys to his Corvette, he rushed himself downstairs and out of his building, hoping that whatever his gut was telling him was going to happen waited long enough for him to get there. 

At sighting how awful traffic was at that hour, his fear heightened. Going by car would take him too long, and hurt or not by the Detective's actions, he needed to save her of this hypothetical threat that was coming her way. He couldn't explain it, he could just sense it. 

He walked back into Lux's side alley and with a roll of his shoulders his wings were out. They were still despised, still unwelcome, but if he had to resort to them to help Chloe, he would do so in a heartbeat. 

He had picked on The Cabin's set address during his brief stop at the precinct earlier in the morning, so he knew exactly where he could go. That and the fact that whenever his wings were out his senses heightened even more, which meant he could pick up on her scent should he want to or should he feel it necessary. 

By the time he landed he did have to resort to his celestial sense of smell to pinpoint Chloe, because otherwise, finding her in between so many bushes and trees would indeed be proven to be impossible. 

He followed the trail of her sweet scent towards a not so small shed on the side, clearly used for wood storage and things of the sort. He carefully hid himself so that, should Chloe be in danger, he could jump out in action and protect her. While he was indeed worried about her, he still wanted to respect the boundaries she had imposed. If she really didn't need him to be there, then she wouldn't even find out he followed her all the way through. 

He could hear her and make out part of her usually slender silhouette. She was professionally talking the cameraman into a confession, looking around and being as sleek as ever as her cop voice took over. She managed to crouch down in spite of being nine months pregnant, and started inspecting the camera batteries stacked on the lower shelves, keeping the conversation going as she did so. 

"Who else has access to this equipment?" She asked as she pulled one particular camera battery out, noticing blood on one of its edges. The cameraman started walking backward, allowing a chill to run down the devil's spine as he figured out what he was intending to do. There was an axe nearby. Far too nearby.

"I'm in charge of it, but I guess anyone could get access if they tried," he said, followed by the sound of a sharp axe detaching itself from a log of wood. 

"Yeah," Lucifer was so thankful to have supernatural hearing and vision, because just the smallest change in Chloe's posture told him she was now aware she was under threat. She tried to pull her gun out of its holster to aim it at the cameraman, but she wasn't fast enough. 

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he threatened, and Lucifer got moving. He had a feeling she was far too pregnant to move quickly enough. He hid himself behind a wall, dying to step in action. 

"It's alright. I just want to talk. I want to get your side of things," she said professionally, lifting up her arms in defeat and trying to talk him down. Her voice was monotone and not loaded with emotion as someone would expect. On the contrary, she was quite composed. 

Lucifer was dying to do something about it. Chloe left him for six months because she realized he was the devil? Yes. Did he care? Now, absolutely no. Would he do anything to ensure her safety and that she got to live a long, happy life? In a heartbeat. 

The cameraman confessed, tightly holding on to the axe and threatening Chloe with throwing it her way. He didn't care that the detective was very obviously pregnant, he didn't care that he would have to kill yet another person just so get away with his first murder. He just wanted to get away with it. 

However, he wasn't counting on the fact that a) the woman before him was as indestructible as it could possibly get and b) the devil was nearby, listening and ready to take action. 

"I'm sick of it!" And with that, Lucifer just knew what he had to do. 

"Detective! No!" He yelled as he threw himself in front of her and beyond, catching the axe and taking it with him as Chloe made quick work of pulling her gun out and shooting the cameraman on the leg.

Everything happened so fast it gave neither of the people in there enough time to even understand it. 

Uniformed officers came through the door and apprehended the cameraman, roughly grabbing him by under his arms and dragging him away while he screamed in pain, blaming Chloe for it. Of course, Chloe had been smart about it and he called for back up when she put two and two together and realized who the killer had been. She would never go truly alone to arrest a suspect she was so sure was the murderer. 

"Lucifer, oh my god," and there it was. It didn't take her too long to figure out what had happened and why an axe hadn't impacted her body. 

"Oh, well, there's an oxymoron," murmured the devil from his stance right against the wooden pole, axe fixating him in place. 

He felt her soft and usually tentative hands make their quick way to the place where the axe met the pole, pulling his jacket and shirt away from his body to corroborate that it was, indeed, just his jacket. 

"It's just your jacket," she sighed from relief, not even realizing just how tight her belly was. Had they been in any other circumstance and she would've immediately noticed, particularly because of how uncomfortable it could be. She looked up at him with relief in her eyes. "You're okay."

"Hardly. It's the second suit I've ruined in as many days, but, yes..." he trailed off as Chloe pulled the axe out, examining it with confusion and curiosity with her beautiful, ocean-like pools. "Are you okay?"

And then, with just one sigh as a response, she brought the axe up to his chest, where the buttons of his shirt had given way when said axe almost took the life out of him. 

"If I pushed this... Into your chest, it would kill you?" Her eyes were glossy, and all too suddenly the rest of the world had disappeared around them. Just completely vanished. 

"Yes." Lucifer confirmed without hesitation, axe firmly pressed to his breastbone, in the hands of the human he trusted the most, even after all they had been through. 

"Because I'm close to you?" She asked again, voice threatening to break into a sob. 

"Yes." The sureness yet softness of his voice was mesmerizing. 

"But you jumped in front of it anyway." And she said it like she didn't believe he actually would. 

"Yes." He had never been more sure of anything in his life the moment he jumped in between his detective and an axe flying towards her heart. "And I would do it again. And again. Don't you know that, Detective?" 

She shook her head softly, bringing her eyes back down to the axe and pulling it away slowly, discovering the single cut she had made to the devil's prefect, tan and freckled skin. A chest she knew to be so warm and welcoming, a place where she had felt home once upon a time. Blinking back tears she could remember what falling asleep to the sound of his heartbeat felt like, and she wanted to go back there so badly it ached. It sat right there, tight, at the top of her stomach, filling her up with melancholy. 

"I'm sorry..." she mumbled, running her thumb up the cut to hopefully dry out the blood and help it stop bleeding. "I'm sorry, I..."

And yet again, they were interrupted. 

Not by a phone call, much like it had happened in the past, or by someone walking in on them and forcing them to separate, no. They had been interrupted by something else. Something greater. 

"I think my water just broke,"


	4. My Lucky Charm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, gals, non-binary pals! How are you?
> 
> I've got just one more midterm (tomorrow, might I add) and then I'm free! I can't believe it! I haven't done as well as I would've liked but alas, I've given it my best. 
> 
> I know how you all have been waiting for this chapter! I think, from the ones I've written so far, it's one of my favorites! I couldn't wait to post it and I almost posted it earlier than I should have (yo girl is on a tight schedule, sorry that I didn't give in to temptation).
> 
> Let's all say a very big Thank You to my friend Chany28 who proof read all 5k words of this thing, plus all the other 5 chapters I have done and ready to go. She's the bestest!
> 
> Without further adieu, I'll leave you to this masterpiece that gives us gender and name reveal for the Deckerstar baby! How exciting!
> 
> All my love, Rena.

The feeling of uncomfortable wetness spread over her like wildfire, soaking her pants in record time.

"Fuck..." she mumbled, not out of pain or anything, at least not yet, but because it was beginning to sink in.

"Wha... What do you mean your water broke?" Lucifer asked confusedly, the softness that his eyes had gained over that last moment they shared quickly fading to worry once he saw the shift in Chloe’s semblance. 

"It means..." And there it was, her first contraction. Awfully painful, yes, but not bad enough that it impaired her to talk through it. "It means the baby is coming," she said through gritted teeth, letting the axe she was still holding onto fall down to the floor and taking a hold of Lucifer's forearm to steady herself. 

"The baby as in..." it was as if the news weren't being processed the right way inside Lucifer's head.

"Yes, Lucifer. The baby," she mumbled again, slightly shocked by how strong the contraction was for having been the first one. Then again, her water had broken, which always meant a spike in intensity contraction-wise.

"What do I do?" he said, completely frozen in place as he allowed Chloe to hold on to him. He truly had no idea of the human process of bringing a child into the world, and Chloe seemed to be in pain. He was really short of freaking out.

"Just..." she sighed after a couple of seconds, feeling the contraction fade away and regaining some of her strength, at least enough to stand on her own. "We... We're going to walk to my car and you're going to drive me to the hospital, okay?" She stated, breathing heavily as she noticed how the pain of the contraction, instead of leaving her completely, went towards her lower back. She really didn’t want to think about it but it reminded her of, when laboring with Trixie, her contractions started to not really fade away after her water broke. 

"I can do that... Yes, I can definitely do that," he said, trying to keep himself at check and offering Chloe his arm to hold onto, letting her be the one that chose when to start walking towards her car.

"I... I don't understand. I still have a month to go, this shouldn't be happening," she commented, walking slowly to the exit and hoping that the eyes of the uniformed officers she had requested for backup wouldn’t fall on her. 

“If you don’t know, then I know even less...” He did notice he was doing his best not to freak out, and he also did notice that he wasn’t doing it for his own sake like he normally would, but rather for Chloe’s. “Are you sure you didn't just wet yourself?”

“Just to remind you, I’ve had a kid before. I perfectly know how it feels when your water breaks and no, Lucifer. I didn’t pee myself,” She said, wanting to sound far more annoyed than she actually was. She just couldn’t believe it was happening.

“Okay, okay! I just wanted to rule out that possibility,” she made her best effort to give him her usual death-stare, but all that came out was an eye-roll.

“It’s just a week short of term, though. The baby should be fine,” changing the topic, she said, more trying to convince herself that it was okay going into labor at almost thirty-six weeks, instead of the usual plus thirty-seven.

“Detective Decker!” An uniformed officer called her name, and she groaned in frustration. She could already feel her belly tightening again, and that was definitely not a good sign. Even more so when amniotic fluid kept gushing out of her private parts. “How do you want us to procee– Hold on, is everything alright?” Marc, a really nice officer she knew barely by name approached her, and upon noticing how tightly she was holding onto Lucifer he immediately stopped. He would make a good detective further down his career. Thankfully, it was so dark on that set that the huge wet patch on Chloe’s jeans wasn’t noticeable to the naked eye.

“I’m going into labor,” she mumbled, already feeling how her next contraction was building up. She probably just had less than twenty seconds before it hit her, and she needed to do something about the whole ‘apprehending a suspect’ aspect of her job.

“Woah woah. Don’t you want to go to the ambo that just arrived?” Marc offered sweetly, and Chloe would’ve smiled at him if she weren’t so worried.

“Leave that to the suspect, Lucifer can drive me to the hospital,” The officer gave her an unsure look but ultimately abided by her order. After all, there was a reason why she was the superior officer. “Call Detective Espinoza to close this, he knows the case well enou– ugh!” she yelped in pain when the contraction she saw coming finally hit her, tightening her belly and putting a lot of pressure on her pelvic floor. Why was it going so fast? She couldn’t remember it being so painful back when she had Trixie. “Fuck, these hurt!”

“I’ll… I’ll make sure to call Dan, Detective. Anything else?” Lucifer was silently lending his arm so Chloe could have something to hold on to. The thought that someone he cared so much for was in such a great deal of pain, plus the fact that the antichrist was making its way into the world had not sunk in yet. When those two little details finally clicked inside Lucifer’s head, he would be lost. The least they could expect from him was going AWOL.

“No, just… You’re in charge until Dan shows up, okay?” she managed to get those few words out through gritted teeth, holding onto Lucifer like he was a lifeline and resisting the urge to bend over in pain.

“Okay, okay… Good luck, I guess!” Marc’s lack of knowledge about her situation made him think that things were just like any normal delivery. How wrong he was.

Chloe couldn’t bring herself to say ‘thank you’ because that contraction in particular was twisting her inside out. She was definitely worrying now. That contraction was far too strong to be just a simple early labor contraction, and she didn’t want to start thinking about possible outcomes. Oh, how she was hoping her gut was wrong.

Once she could breathe normally again, she started waddling towards her car in an effort to get there before the next contraction hit her. She surely wouldn’t be able to walk through one of them, and she was really looking forward to getting to the hospital and hopefully getting an epidural. 

“Detective, I’m not knowledgeable about childbirth, but is it supposed to hurt you this much?” Lucifer asked her once Chloe’s gray cruiser was in their line of sight. 

“Yes and no,” she sighed. Things were escalating far too quickly both time-wise and pain-wise. “I… I don’t know why it was so sudden, it normally isn’t, but my water broke. There’s no way this baby is staying inside of me for another day,”

They reached the car and Chloe assessed her situation. The pain on her lower back was now a constant, and her belly was just beginning to tighten again. She had time to make herself comfortable. 

She loosened her grip on Lucifer’s arm and waddled over to one of the backdoors of her car, intending to ride in the back seeing as there was far more space for her to labor while Lucifer drove. She was so thankful her brain could still function at that time. It gave her hope that labor wasn’t as far along as her gut was telling her it was. 

She called Lucifer over with a hand gesture and the devil was beside her as fast as his legs could carry him, ready to help her however he could. All of their issues had been paused momentarily. No one was thinking of the pain and sorrow lived through those last six months, Chloe wasn’t thinking of Father Kinley and what she almost did, Lucifer wasn’t thinking about how Chloe had just found out that she made him vulnerable. They just had each other, and in times of pressure, Chloe thought and Lucifer acted. It had always been that way, why should it be different when having a baby, right?

Chloe grunted and moaned in pain as she grabbed onto Lucifer’s forearm like a lifeline, riding through that contraction as well as she could and trying to ignore the uncomfortableness of her wet pants and underwear. She told herself how to breathe, how to stand, what to think. She was being her own birthing coach, and for that she was thankful. Only God knew what would happen if the chore of being a supportive doula fell on Lucifer’s shoulders. 

Once the pain was over, she made quick work of kicking her flats out of her feet and hooking her fingers on the waistband of her maternity jeans and underwear, pulling them down as far as she possibly could, not having a care in the world that she was now half-naked before the Prince of Darkness.

“What… What are you doing?” Lucifer asked, baffled by seeing Chloe do something as stripping down in front of him so deliberately. 

“I am going to give birth to a child… Your child, Lucifer, and my pants and underwear are soaked. Suck it up, you've seen me naked before,” she said humorlessly, getting rid of her pants and underwear by means of shaking them off her legs since crouching down was no longer an option. Once her lower half was left uncovered, she opened the door to her gray cruiser and sat herself on the backseat, thankful that she’d managed to strip down before the next contraction made her double over.

“Okay, okay,” he agreed swiftly, and once he saw Chloe was as comfortable as possible on the back of the car, he rushed himself towards the driver’s seat, turning the car on with the copy of the keys he always carried around.

“You have a copy of my car keys?” Chloe managed to question him, getting ready to endure yet another contraction. The hospital was a good half-hour away, so she would have to get used to going through them as comfortably as her car allowed her to.

“I’ve had them for a while, but I do believe we have far more pressing issues at hand, Detective,” for once, his first instinct wasn’t running away or shutting down. He was working. As long as Chloe kept on thinking and giving him orders, he would be fine. They would be fine. 

“As soon as this is over I want th– Fuck!” she screamed in pain the moment her fourth contraction took over her stomach, making her notice how desperate she was to hold onto something. The pressure on her private parts and the way things were feeling whenever she had a contraction were nothing short of worrying.

“Again? I thought you’d never ask,” Lucifer said, trying to bring humor into the matter like he normally would whenever he was stressed. Needless to say, it didn’t sound half as funny because a) he couldn’t manage to say it with his usual, charming tone and b) Chloe was in an almost unbearable amount of pain right then. The last thing she would care about was keeping Lucifer on the line, and if making sarcastic comments helped him sort his issues regarding their baby’s birth, he might as well get started. She just knew she couldn’t care about him while delivering a child. 

“Just… drive,” she mumbled through the pain, forcing herself to keep breathing so her nausea would stay at bay. “If making jokes helps you, then go ahead,” the sigh of relief she let out right before saying those words was what actually gave them a meaning. She was in a great deal of pain, as Lucifer knew she would normally never agree to put up with his luciferness. 

The drive to the hospital was easily the most painful half-hour of Chloe’s life. Ten minutes into it and it was enough for her to realize that, with Trixie, her pain level had never gotten so high, so she might as well be past the point of getting any pain medication whenever they arrived. She would one hundred percent choose getting shot in the gut ten times over having to have back to back contractions with less than a minute to breathe in between them. They were far longer than they were apart, their intensity was increasing significantly and the thought that after one always came another managed to terrify her. 

It was when they were five minutes away from the hospital that things got past the point of no return. She needed to do something to cope with the pain as it was draining her out with each and every contraction. She wanted it to stop.

“We’re almost there, Detective. Hold on,” she oftentimes could hear Lucifer’s words of encouragement, oftentimes not. The pain was so great she would space out through it, not being able to pay attention to her surroundings, not being able to talk, not being able to do anything. “You’ll get to the hospital on time, and you’ll get to meet your child, and everything will be great. It has to be,” some of those words made it to her ears, particularly the ‘your child’part, some others didn’t.

It was when the next contraction hit her that she knew there was no way they would be able to arrive in time to the hospital. At least not with enough time to spare so that she wouldn’t have to deliver in the middle of the ER. 

The strong urge to spread her legs apart and bear down took over her in an instinctive, biological hail mary to ease her pain, as one last, ditch effort to get her pain over with. She wasn’t even aware she was doing it, as her logical brain would surely tell her that it wasn’t time, that she couldn’t start pushing. However, when instinct took over, there wasn’t much left for her mind to do. 

“Detective?” Lucifer looked at her through the rearview mirror, horrified when the sight of her beetroot read face made him understand what was going on. “Detective?” She was unresponsive, far too concentrated on what she was doing to pay him any attention. “Bloody hell, not here.” he cursed and did something extremely irresponsible: sped up and grabbed his phone, dialling nine one one.

“Nine one one, what is your emergency?” The dispatcher said on the other side of the line, and Lucifer let out a sigh of relief by how quickly they had picked up the call.

“Yes, hello. My partner is giving birth in the backseat of the car.” Those were a combination of words that Lucifer thought would never leave his mouth.

“Where are you so we can send over assistance?” The woman on the other side of the line asked monotonically, probably far too used to hearing things of the sort, or even worse. 

“I’m on my way to the Cedars-Sinai. Just tell the staff from the ER to meet us in the parking lot,” he couldn’t possibly think and yet, he was handling the situation far better than he could ever imagine. 

“We’ll call labor and delivery for you, sir. Just be sure she doesn’t start pushing. Would you like to stay on the line?” and that's when he heard Chloe grunt in pain yet again, and looking through the rearview mirror told him that all he needed to focus on right then was getting Chloe to a hospital as safely as possible. 

“No. But thank you very much, ma’am.” He said politely before he hung up. They were almost there, surely he could make it. He should have taken her flying, why didn't he think of that? “It’s okay, Chloe. We’re almost there,”

“I can’t,” she cried out. Things had escalated so quickly it hadn’t even given her body the time to adjust. She needed to push and she would push. 

“Yes, you can. I’ve seen you do things tougher than this,” He encouraged her in the only way he knew of, being incredibly thankful and relieved when the Cedars-Sinai center came into his field of vision. They could make it. 

“I doubt that,” she mumbled during a brief interval of awareness. And soon enough she went back to doing what her body was telling her to do, which was to push her child out into the world.

“Hold… Hold on, Detective. Don’t do that. You’re not supposed to do that,” he told her off when he was her bear down and push, growing restless because he needed to get there. He needed to get her help. 

“I can’t!” She screamed yet again, and through the rearview mirror Lucifer saw something he would never forget. And his ‘never’ would last until the end of time.

He saw how something round and hard, but also seemingly soft, slowly made its way towards the world. The head of the child was by no means out yet, but he could barely see a sliver of brownish hair poking out as Chloe kept fiercely pushing, trying to rid herself of the pain childbirth imposed. That child was coming, and chances were, Chloe would never make it to the hospital pregnant still. 

Quickly and desperately enough, he pulled into the parking lot of the hospital and parked in the first available place he could find, not caring if his parking wasn’t as seamless as he prided himself it was. There was just one thing on his mind and that was getting Chloe some medical attention.

“Chloe, that’s it. We’re here.” she didn’t seem to hear what he said when he turned around to look at her, too focused on her pushing. “I’m going to need to get you out of the car, you have to help, all right?” She was lucid enough to shake her head vigorously. “No? Detective, you can’t give birth here. You need a Doctor,”

“I… I just need you.” she mumbled, breathing in and out very heavily after catching a small break. “Don’t let the baby fall,”

“What?” Oh no. No, no. He was not going to be delivering that child. There was no way. “Surely you must be joking,”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” She grunted, feeling too uncomfortable to think. 

“You don't, which is why it worries me,” he sighed, his breaths picking up a strong pace as he tried to figure out what to do. It would take a while for the doctors to get there, even more so now that he didn’t stop on the door of the ER. He could still barely see the sliver of hair looming from in between Chloe’s legs, he could see how tired and in pain she was. 

He would have to do it. There was no other way. 

“Okay, okay,” he mumbled, trying to let the idea settle inside his head before he got to working. He turned on the car’s hazard lights and opened up the door to the passenger side, getting out of it and walking over to the backside to help Chloe out as much as he could. He took his suit jacket off and placed it on top of Chloe’s abdomen, trying to cover her up from the cold. “Let’s move you this way so the chances of me dropping the spawn decrease significantly, alright?” She didn’t even agree. He moved her around so her private bits were facing the open back door, where he was standing outside of the car. It surely must have been uncomfortable but it was the only way. 

“I have to…” Chloe whimpered when another contraction came her way, her instincts forcing her to push. “I need to push.”

“You do you, I… I’ll try to assure this child doesn’t touch the car floor,” he was nervous, anxious, terrified. Never in a million years would he have thought he’d ever deliver a child, and he had been alive for longer than that, so that was saying something. 

And Chloe gave her child her whole. She pushed so hard all the veins in her face and neck popped out significantly, her skin getting red, hot and sweaty. She pushed so hard that, were the front seat’s headrest something alive —say, Lucifer’s arm—, it would’ve squeezed the life out of it. Her womb cried in pain with each contraction, hurting her with a pain so great it brought tears to her eyes. She couldn’t wait until those tears went from being out of pain, to being out of utter happiness. 

Slowly but surely the head of the soon-to-be-newborn made its way into the world. It was one of the worst settings possible for a birth, but it was what they had and from that, they needed to do everything they could. 

Lucifer watched as the sliver of brownish hair covered in some sort of substance unbeknownst to him widened with each and every push, saying that the antichrist was about to enter the world. Oh, how he hoped that that kid wouldn’t bring humanity any trouble. 

He couldn’t bring himself to touch, he wouldn’t know how to. For the first time in his life he had been presented with a vagina and he didn’t know what to do. He just watched and hoped he’d be able to keep his promise of not letting the baby fall to the floor. Chloe was doing all the work, and he was just there, probably traumatizing himself for the rest of eternity. Not even seeing his mother naked had made him as nauseous. 

It took Chloe around three contractions to fully get the head of her baby out. Lucifer would never forget how the head of that baby popped out the same way a pimple would, all at once and very fast. 

It had a respectable amount of hair, not too much, not too little, and it was covered in a mixture of fluids and blood that Lucifer had no knowledge of. How ironic it would be if their child, considering how black the devil’s hair was, turned out to be blonde. 

Chloe was able to catch a small break after the baby crowned, and as she panted heavily, she seriously wondered if that was really happening to her. Was she really giving birth in a car? 

“Lucifer…” the devil looked up, surprised by her voice. 

“Yes… What is it?” He asked with as much worry as Chloe had ever heard in his voice. She knew the worst part of delivery was coming, but still, getting the head of the baby out could be kind of a relief. 

“Now… Now you’re going to have to help me,” Lucifer swallowed hard, the lump as rough as sandpaper as it went down his throat. “You’re going to have to… Turn the baby clockwise until it faces up, and… then pull gently as I push. It can get stuck if you don’t,” 

“I’m going to have to what?” He couldn’t believe her words, he couldn’t believe his life. He still couldn’t understand how that child had even come into existence, how was he supposed to know how to bring it into the world? “Okay, I can totally do that,”

The look Chloe gave him was enough for him to understand that she was serious. That she needed him. 

The next contraction, and hopefully the last one, came to be, and Chloe bore down much like she had been doing for the past ten minutes. Lucifer watched as the head of the baby started to turn on its own, so he just placed his hands on it and helped it turn completely, before pulling softly. That was a memory he would never forget, no matter what happened to him. 

The moment Chloe gave her hardest push yet and Lucifer pulled on the head of the baby, was the moment that the child they had both created came into the world. Head first, then shoulders and all too quickly the rest of its body, so fast that Lucifer almost broke his promise of not letting it fall. 

Almost. 

The baby made it quickly into the hands of the devil, who, in turn, was quick to place it on top of Chloe’s deflating stomach. Chloe’s hands went to it immediately, not being able to see it because she was now laying down, but being able to feel its body as Lucifer placed it on her. She rubbed it lightly, encouraging it to cry because it was a sound she so desperately needed to hear then. 

The cries came almost immediately after. 

Sharp and loud cries of life from one of the smallest living creatures Lucifer had ever seen. So frail, so delicate, so tiny. 

He contributed to what Chloe was doing, lifting up his suit jacket and encouraging the newborn to cry, being completely driven by something alien to him. A feeling so strong and overpowering he knew he had no use fighting it. 

“Hi… Hi baby,” Chloe greeted her newly born child, smiling and crying as the cries of the tiny creature filled up the car. “I’ve been waiting so long to meet you,” 

All too suddenly, Chloe wasn’t in the back of her car anymore. She’d been transported to a time where everything was unsure, where tomorrow wasn’t something she’d be able to take for granted. 

She remembered feeling so overwhelmed, so guilty, so… helpless. 

She’d run away from a situation she’d caused, and came across a park while she was still in Rome, Italy. She wasn’t too far along, barely fifteen weeks pregnant, but she was plenty scared, and plenty happy at the same time. 

She had taken a seat underneath an oak tree and cried her eyes out, ugly snot and sobbing included. She had been so confused, she didn’t know what to believe anymore, she… she wanted to go back home. She wanted to have work as an excuse not to deal with what was happening to her, she wanted to have her friends to confide in. She wanted to take refuge in the arms of the one man that, with one night, had managed to make all her problems and preoccupations disappear. At least for a long, very enjoyable while. 

She couldn’t quite remember how long it had been since she had taken a seat underneath that tree, and it was a while before she lowered her hands and actually thought about that thing that brought her comfort. She just remembered that, when she felt threatened, in harm’s way, something came to her that managed to ease her mind. At least just for that very while. Something brief but pure, enough so that her heart would stop beating out of her chest.

She had been thinking of Lucifer, of how badly she wanted his comfort, of how badly she wanted things to go back to normal so they could have the life she wanted them to have. She had been wishing upon a proverbial star, wanting nothing but a sense of normalcy, a small hint that things would be just fine. She had been picturing him in all of his dorky glory, doing things no one would even imagine the devil would do. 

That was when she saw it. In between the green, lively grass, was a four-leaf-clover, standing out both in shape and in color, catching her attention immediately. Her eyes fixated on it, and for a moment that was it. There was no more pain, no more heartache, she felt closer to home than she’d ever felt before. She couldn’t quite explain it, and she didn’t care that she couldn’t. All that was there was the immense sense of peace and harmony that settled around her. 

She picked it up, and as careful as ever, placed it on her growing belly. Suddenly, there was not a single doubt in either her head or heart that managed to convince her it hadn’t been her baby. She took a deep breath in, and realized that as long as she held her family together she would be able to cope with anything. Because that was what her child meant to her. Her everything. Antichrist or not. 

“My lucky charm,” she’d said it back then when she first found the clover. She said it again when her child was placed on her belly right after birth. 

“Quite an opportune timing, might I say,” Lucifer said rather sarcastically, strangely unable to keep a smile from rising up to his face. What was wrong with him? “I’m pleased to inform you, Detective, you have another daughter to add to your family,” he said, catching a glimpse of the baby’s body and noticing that, indeed, she was a girl. 

“A girl?” Chloe looked up at him with a shine in her eyes so beautiful Lucifer found himself wanting to see as much of it as celestially possible. She seemed so… whole, so happy. He made a noise of agreement, no longer aware of the width of his smile, and no longer paying attention to all the things from that situation that would normally horrify him. For instance, just how wet everything around them was. 

“I Never envisioned the antichrist to be a woman, but hey. You never know,,” he commented, watching as Chloe held on to her newborn, still crying daughter. 

“She’s not,” she managed to mumble, wanting to pull her daughter closer to her chest but not being able to, thanks to the umbilical cord still being fully attached. “She’s an angel. My angel,”

“I beg to differ,” only that the devil noticed that Chloe was no longer paying attention to his commentary, too focused on her new daughter. 

“My little lucky charm,” she mumbled, embezzled by her daughter’s cries of life, not noticing how her own eyes were losing their shine, not noticing how her own smile was slowly fading away. 

“Detective?” Lucifer was quick to notice Chloe’s change in demeanor, seeing how the smile faded away and how her eyes started having trouble focusing. “Chloe?”

“I love you, Clover,” she named her daughter, and then lost her grip on whatever it was that was keeping her conscious, aware that she was no longer there. 

Consciousness slipped away from her much like water running through her fingers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter's titile is "The hardest beginning" and I'm pretty sure now you know why. See you next friday!!


	5. The hardest beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my darlings!
> 
> I'm so sorry I didn't reply to comments on last chapter but I've had the craziest week. Hope you can forgive me. 
> 
> Also... I WANTED TO THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR 2K HITS AND 100+ KUDOS! That's insane! We're only four chapters in and your support has been so amazing. I don't have enough words to thank you for that. 
> 
> I know you hate me for my cliffhangers and my excessive drama but we're ahead of calm-ish times for the deckerstar duo and baby Clover. Gosh, I just love that name. I hope you'll like this chapter where our Luci boy gets something off his chest ^^. 
> 
> I'm trying to work on a thing that can be called "My attempt at writing a fanfic that's not a word monster", and I really think you guys will like it. Always angsty, always painful, but slightly more compact. I'll keep on writing and see if I can tell you about it in the next couple of weeks.
> 
> With nothing more on my end to say, I'll leave you to Deckerstar's hardest beginning. Hope you'll like it and if you do, please leave a comment down below. It makes me super happy. 
> 
> All my love, Rena.

“Chloe?” Lucifer was almost as quick as lighting to realize Chloe had stopped responding. It was obvious in the way her hands no longer tried to get the newborn baby girl up to her chest anymore, or in the way her eyes slowly but surely started to stare into nothingness. It was all in her eyes. “Detective? Wakey wakey, Detective, it’s not time to go to sleep.” Lucifer said in between the cries, but to no avail. “Bloody hell.”

“Excuse me, sir?” He heard a voice from behind him and it was upon turning to face them that he realized just how gruesome the back of that car looked.

Chloe was oozing an unhealthy amount of blood, probably enough to explain her recent passing out, and he was covered in a mixture of human fluids that looked to be taken out straight of a horror movie. The baby was crying her lungs out sharply and highly, moving as much as she could within her mother’s limp hands. At least the only smell there was that of blood. 

It was then that it dawned on him. Chloe had just given birth to a child. His child. And she was now unconscious and making a pool of blood in the back of her car, with a baby girl crying on top of her limp body, looking paler by the second. He had just experienced that, and he was nothing short of in shock.

“Sir, we need...” and when the woman behind him caught a glimpse of how gruesome everything inside that car was, she got to moving. “Page nine one one, we’re going to need an OR!” she yelled to the people under her command, and they all got to moving. 

Lucifer felt as he was physically pushed away from inside the car, as some intern or someone he just couldn’t care enough to notice moved him away to leave space for the medical professionals. He was left standing by the side of the door, watching as the woman that had first called him put two clamps on the baby girl’s umbilical cord and cut it in a rush, separating mother and daughter completely. 

“Where is all this blood coming from?” Bleeding after delivery was something normal. However, the amount of blood Chloe was losing was nothing short of deeply concerning.

Lucifer watched as the woman picked the baby girl up, the little bundle that couldn’t possibly weigh more than six pounds, and wrapped her around Lucifer’s suit jacket, handing her over to him in a hurry as they tried to deal with Chloe and how they were going to save her. Lucifer took her into his arms and he didn’t care about his lack of experience, no. He was just instinctively following orders, doing what the doctors told him to even if not verbally. 

Clover, as Chloe had named her, was still profusely crying in his arms. She was probably just as shocked as he was from the whole ‘coming into the world’ thing. They were both in a state of shock; he from the perspective of a man who delivered a child, and her from the perspective of being the child that was delivered. Lucifer found himself staring at her, trying to drown out the chaos and the nerves from the situation going on around him while staring at the newborn.

She had a fairly light skin color, if the redness of her skin right after birth told him something. There wasn't much hair coating her tiny head, but the hair that was there was of a light brown color, much like the color Chloe’s hair would be if she didn’t dye it blonde. Her eyes were a mystery, since she was crying so loudly and fiercely. They were shut closed very tightly as she still managed to find herself comfortable with breathing, and Lucifer suddenly found himself curious to know what color they were. She had long fingers that were curled into fists as she sought for comfort somewhere she wouldn’t find it, and she was just so little. Lucifer was embezzled. He just couldn’t believe it. That thing he had in his arms, that tiny, little girl crying her lungs out and breathing for the very first time had come from Chloe and him. It was completely unbelievable. 

“How…” he was about to wonder how on earth had they been able to make that being come into existence with just one night. How? However, the medical team surrounding them had far better and more important things to do. 

“We need to check on that baby,” and all of a sudden Lucifer felt all too protective over the crying little creature. He was, by no means, a fan of children, much less dirty newborns covered in all their pregnancy goo, but there was just something about her that didn’t allow him to give her away. 

Maybe it was the fact that the detective was being moved from the car to a stretcher, still losing blood and being completely unconscious, fighting for her life. He knew how much that defenseless baby meant to her, so maybe that was why he was so protective over the little urchin. He was taking care of what was Chloe’s while she was impaired to do so. 

And yet… He couldn’t lie to himself. That wasn’t all there was to the story. 

He pulled away when a doctor approached him, shielding the baby and cradling her close to his chest in a way he didn’t even know he could do. He had never held a baby before, and yet, holding her came to him as easily as second nature. 

“Sir, we need to see it,” the doctor insisted, trying to get Lucifer to cooperate as the other doctors rushed Chloe into the hospital. They had been fast to move her from the backseat of the car to the stretcher and away. Things were probably not looking good on that front. 

“Her, if you don’t mind,” he corrected the doctor as he forced himself to relax. His logical, usual, immature brain asked him what was his business in all of that? He had told the detective he wanted to keep that child at arm's length just over an hour ago, and yet… That very same child was now far closer to him than that. 

“Well, sir, we need to get that baby checked out and make sure she’s healthy enough to be without medical assistance. You’ll have to come with us,” the doctor insisted, being awfully patient and confident that the baby was healthy enough for them not to worry. She was healthy alright, if her cries told them something. 

“Okay,” Lucifer agreed, and without giving up on Clover he started walking towards the entrance of the hospital, catching a glimpse of how they rushed Chloe through the doors. 

Worry settled inside of him like a ball of lead at the pit of his stomach. Chloe, the woman that had meant so much to him back in the day, and still did —enough for him to jump in front of a flying axe, knowing very well it could kill him, just to protect her—, was fully unconscious and being hurried away into an OR. Doctors were going to help her fight for her life, and he was scared. He wasn’t mentally or emotionally prepared to lose her. There were so many things left to discuss with her, so much stuff they needed to go through. 

And also, there was Clover. 

She was calming down as the minutes went by and as Lucifer picked up a pace towards the entrance of the hospital, being cradled into the arms of the man that had brought her to life, but was still far too scared to call himself her father. She finally opened her eyes and looked up, and it was only thanks to Lucifer’s supernatural sense of orientation that he didn’t bump into a car on the way to the hospital. 

Her eyes were the typical newborn-gray color, still needing time to change to the color they would stay at for the rest of her life. There was truly nothing special about them, they were just eyes, but they looked up at him. 

And he felt like she knew him. 

At barely minutes old and being mildly premature, he could feel how the little urchin stared into his soul, eyes wide open and round as her mouth looked for something to suck onto. She eventually found her own fist and started suckling on it, never once looking at anything other than the devil’s dark and very troubled eyes. 

“Sir… Sir, triage is this way,” he had been so focused on the little girl’s seemingly purposeful stare that he didn’t even realize they had entered the hospital and were now heading towards the triage area. He needed to see Chloe and know she would be alright; he really did. But he also didn’t think himself capable of letting go of that little baby any time soon. It was as if she had taken a claim on him, as if she had bewitched him —if such a thing were ever to exist—. 

With one last look at the labor and delivery sign on the wall, and thinking of Chloe, he went the other way, following the man he now knew was a nurse into triage so the baby cradled in his arms and wrapped by his suit jacket could get looked at. 

_ “Dad, I swear, if anything happens to her you are going to wish you never created humanity in the first place,” _ he silently told his father, knowing the almighty was listening but also knowing he would never get an answer. He would tear Heaven apart if something ever happened to her.

Lucifer followed the doctor into a bullpen that consisted of multiple, small rooms, much like an emergency room. They had to get her through there before admitting her to the NICU if they had to, making sure she was breathing on her own and didn’t need immediate medical assistance. He entered one of said rooms, finding the number of machines in there to be quite worrisome. 

“Place her here, please,” the nurse asked him upon reaching an examination table, where he reluctantly placed the little urchin down, refusing to move an inch. 

There was something that had taken over him ever since Clover had been born, an instinct so primal to protect and provide that had managed to kick him out of his hinges. He had never felt so attached to anyone that way. Surely, he’d felt meaningful connections in the past but none of them managed to match what he had felt when that little girl had stared into his eyes. 

He was confused. He was scared. There was a part of him that was begging him to run away, to walk through the door and never look back in order not to feel what he was feeling right there anymore.

And also, there was this other side of him that desperately wanted to stay. It wanted to protect, to love, to cherish, and it was a feeling so alien to him. Not even Chloe had ever managed to make him feel that way, and God knew how special that woman was to him. 

“Hello,” an unknown voice forced him out of his indecisive bubble, a bubble where everything was either black or white. “Sir, I have to ask you a few questions regarding the birth of your daughter. Do you think you might be able to answer them?”

“Do I have to leave here?” Leaving the side of that examination table was completely out of the question. 

“Preferably yes, but I can ask you here if you feel more comfortable,” Lucifer nodded, swallowing tightly and looking at how the nurses and doctors took care of the baby. They were making sure she was as responsive as possible, being incredibly thorough with checking her breathing and reflexes. “I understand this comes as kind of a shock to you, but it’ll help us a lot if you can talk to us. We’ll be able to deliver better care to your daughter and your partner,”

He hadn’t failed to notice how the nurse had used the word ‘daughter’ twice since she directed herself towards him, and while a part of him, mainly his old self, was gnawing at him to tell her to correct herself and not refer to Clover as his daughter, he just couldn’t bring himself to tell her so. 

“Ask away, then,” he said, never taking his eyes off the newborn. 

“How far along was your partner?” She went straight to the point, drawing out a notepad to scribble on. 

“She… she said something about thirty-six weeks? Does that mean anything to you?” The nurse gave him a weird look, finding it unusual that he wouldn’t know stuff about his partner’s pregnancy. 

“Yes. That’s quite alright. Did she have any complications that you know of during pregnancy? Maybe high blood pressure or something?” 

“No… not that I know of, I mean… She was working when she went into labor, that must mean she was really healthy, right?” He couldn’t bring himself to look the nurse in the eyes. His only focus was the baby and how a nurse was clamping down the umbilical cord further, making it significantly shorter as she cauterized it. 

“I’m sorry but I have to ask, is this your daughter, Mr.…?” Not knowing anything from the pregnancy was making the nurse suspicious, she had every right to be, so she felt forced to make some uncomfortable questions. 

Now, what would he answer? 

The child was indeed his, there was no use denying that since he witnessed Chloe trying to cut her veins open with a shred of sharp glass and not a single droplet of blood had been drawn out. Now, was he the child’s father? Was he willing to take responsibility for everything that title entailed?

He honestly didn’t know. He had been so sure about his decision of staying out of Clover’s life because it would have been what was best for both of them, but now that he had met her, he had this thing inside his heart. It was an aching pain to be near her, to ensure everything was alright with her and that no harm would ever come her way. He had never felt that way before. 

The image of her gray eyes staring into his soul made it back inside his head, and he felt a connection so deep it felt wired through him. He could also feel his playboy self, trying to push the feeling away, to force said wires out of his system, but truth be told, he was losing miserably. Those eyes had sparked something in him. Something he never knew he had within him until just a couple of minutes before. 

And so, with the slightest hint of hesitation in his voice, he talked. 

“Morningstar, and yes. This is my daughter,”

“Well, Mr. Morningstar, everything seems to be looking healthy and great so far. Your daughter is slightly premature but, from what I can tell, she’s not having any problems being earth-side,” Lucifer sighed in relief after hearing those words. Her loud cries had been confirmation enough for him that everything was alright with her, but hearing it from a doctor made him feel so much surer, so much calmer. “Does she have a name?”

“She does, actually,” he could recall Chloe telling the newborn she loved her, followed by her name: Clover. He didn’t know the story behind it, or why Chloe had chosen that to be her name, but he would stick with her pick. After all, Chloe passed out believing he would be out of her and her daughter’s hair once everything was over. “Her name is Clover.”

“That’s a very beautiful name. And her last name?” The nurse wrote it down, typing really fast. 

“I…” and he truly didn’t know what to say then. He had assumed to the nurse that the neonate was his daughter, hell, he had been the one to bring her into the world both with creating her and delivering her. She was his daughter. Now, would Chloe be alright with her having his last name? Moreover, would he be alright to finally face what Clover being a Morningstar meant? “Actually, that’s something me and her mum still have to discuss. I… If you don’t mind waiting until we do so, that would be lovely,” some of his usual charisma had worked its way back into him, and for that he was so thankful. 

“Of course.” She smiled at him, finally seeming to lightly react to his unnatural charm. “So, I’ll leave you be while the doctors examine your daughter, Mr. Morningstar,”

“Thank you,” he mumbled, but having now his full attention on the tiny newborn on the table. 

It was weird, worryingly so even, how badly his arms were aching to hold her again. He saw her cry as the doctors moved her around and tested her, and he wanted nothing but to ease her pain and discomfort any way he could. He had never felt that kind of attachment to someone and it was utterly terrifying, yet so rewarding at the very same time. He felt as confused as any mind could possibly get. 

There it was again, that longing that expressed itself as a painful ache in his heart, when the image of Clover staring into his eyes made it into his mind once again. She was a clever little thing already, and even though he just wanted to hold her and her cries were making him grow restless, he smiled. He smiled because in spite of everything going through his head, all the confusion and fear and anxiety, he also felt love. It was blooming inside of him, spreading like wildfire, and he would never lie and say it wasn’t the best kind of burn he had ever felt. And he had been burned plenty throughout time. 

“Well, sir, this little girl here is a fighter,” came a doctor, a neonatologist, to inform Lucifer. He perked up immediately, wanting to know what was going on with her. 

“Is she okay?” He asked, and the worry in his chocolate pools was as clear as water. 

“She’s a little bit on the lighter side for her gestational age but nothing to worry about too much. Five pounds, five ounces and eighteen inches long,” God, she was tinier than he ever imagined. “She’s breathing on her own without any trouble and her reflexes are all on track. She’s probably going to have to stay here so we can ensure she starts gaining weight, but other than that you shouldn’t worry,” 

“That is good to hear,” he sighed in relief, suddenly having to force himself to keep his father out of his mind.

“Yeah, she’s tough. She’ll be completely fine,” Lucifer gave a side smile, looking at the little girl as a nurse put a diaper that was too big on her, followed by a striped hat with a gigantic bow on it. 

“I bet. If she’s anything like me she might as well be immortal,” she looked so much like Chloe now that he could see her under a better light, that if she were anything like him, he couldn’t tell. It was probably all the goo still left from birth, but he could bet that if they washed her hair, she’d turn out to be a brunette, maybe even blonde. 

“She’ll be back in your arms shortly, Mr. Morningstar,” the doctor said, chuckling lightly before walking away. 

Now, all he needed to know was that Chloe was doing okay so he could finally breathe again. He was so worried about her. 

Last he’d heard was that she needed an OR, and he didn’t know why. His common sense told him it was because of the hefty amount of blood she’d lost during delivery, and, as important as she was to him and his life, he just couldn’t bring himself to go after her. He needed to be with Clover. 

“There you go, Mr. Morningstar.” Said a nurse as she handed him the newborn, wrapped tightly in a swaddle and still crying her lungs out. “A tiny, perfectly healthy baby girl,” 

He took his daughter into his arms without hesitation, cradling her to his chest and momentarily forgetting about everything else. She was fine, healthy and thriving, and he couldn’t stop himself from feeling relief flood through his body. Why was he feeling that way? Why had that last hour changed him so much? 

He’d felt so determined back at the penthouse, when he told Chloe he wanted to stay away because he ‘despised children’. Never in a million years would he have imagined that a bit over an hour later he would be having a newborn cradled into his arms, and that he would call himself her father. How had someone so little and defenseless managed to change him so much in so little time? 

“You have the magic touch, it seems,” a nurse that was cleaning up the examination table once Clover was off of it said, looking at him with something that resembled carnal desire but also endearment. 

“Huh?” He had been far too invested into looking at the newborn and wondering how his night had become what it was to notice that the little girl had stopped fussing. “Oh, well. Who doesn’t love a warm chest to sleep on, am I right?”

“Indeed,” the young nurse commented, cleaning up neatly.

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask, do you have any information on Chloe Decker?” He said, finding it odd to say her name in that way. It felt far too administrative. “She’s the urchin’s mother and she was rushed into an OR, I believe,”

“I don’t, but when the doctors know something they’ll come and tell you,” the nurse smiled sympathetically at him, sort of understanding his situation. Emphasis on ‘sort of’. “For now, you can take a seat anywhere you want and I’ll start on the paperwork for the little one’s admission,” 

“Thank you very much,”

Lucifer spotted an empty armchair that looked to be nothing like the Italian leather couch he had back at his place. However, it would suffice. 

He slowly, and as carefully as ever, made his way towards it, letting instinct be the one to rule him and drive him, giving up power over his own actions. He sat down, careful not to disturb the little urchin that was whimpering a little in his arms, wanting to get into a position where both of them were comfortable enough.

“Oh my dad, you are tiny,” he said to Clover once he settled himself on the couch. Having the time to look at her and actually assess his situation made him realize just how tiny and fragile Clover seemed to be. “I…” and he sighed. 

He felt this extreme need to just come clean to her, to explain the reasoning behind his actions and why he never thought he would have to do that in the first place. The newborn was far too new to understand, but he just needed to do it. Be it for her sake, Chloe’s or even his, he felt like he had to come clean to them. Like he had to apologize. 

“I seem to have misplaced my brain, sorry,” he apologized to the newborn, who was desperately looking for something to suckle on. She found her fist yet again, and with that she felt content enough. Lucifer would have to tell the nurses to feed her or that child would just keep on fussing. “I just…” he sighed, and Clover looked up. It was by no means with the same intensity it had been when he first held her and brought her inside, but it did manage to twist something inside his chest. Hope, maybe. “I have this feeling, it’s… It’s something I can’t quite understand so you’re gonna have to make do with what I can tell you, alright?” Of course, the newborn didn’t answer. She just kept suckling on her fist and looking up at him, or the ceiling, or somewhere in between. “Not even two hours ago I was sure I didn’t want to take part in your life, in who you became,” he started, subconsciously rocking himself back and forth, not realizing just how primal his actions were. “Now I… I helped you into the world, I… I made you. Your mother and I made you,” she looked at him with such peace in her eyes, something he’d never seen before. “And I… There’s something inside of me that’s telling me there’s no way I’m going to stay away from you now,” 

He didn’t care that the medical professionals inside the bullpen might be watching, or that maybe someone would walk by that hall and hear what he had to say. The only one he cared about right then was Clover. His daughter.

“I’m sorry… for ever thinking that staying away from you would be the right thing to do.” He apologized, watching as the little girl just stared back at him, blinking slowly. “But I’m also sorry for choosing to stay, because I know I’m the furthest thing from father material this earth has ever seen.” He took a deep, shaky breath in. “I just hope that I don’t mess you up too much in the future, because there’s something inside me that just knows I won’t be able to stay away. Even if I force myself to,” he was in their own little bubble, where nothing but his feelings had the key to enter. “I don’t know if this thing I feel is love, I really don’t. I’ve never felt it before, at least not towards anyone but my parents and siblings, and let me tell you, that was a really, really long time ago. Hopefully you’ll never have to meet them, Amenadiel is the only one that’s nice,” he would never tell Amenadiel he said so, and he would take refuge in the fact that his daughter was just a newborn that wouldn’t remember anything from that unidirectional conversation. “I just hope that, come what may, I… I’m here. I’m sticking around for both you, and your mother. Hell, maybe even your older sister, I don’t know. She’s part of your life, so she might as well be a part of mine, too…”

He just couldn’t choose not to be there. He couldn’t bring himself to abandon her, he just was completely unable to even think about it. He had only known of her existence for less than a month, and had actually known her for less than an hour and yet… Yet he knew his heart wouldn’t be able to live without her. It would constrict just at the mere thought of walking away from her life, much like he had intended to do. 

“I still don’t know how you managed to even come into existence, given I’m an angel and your mother is a human, but… I do know that I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe. To prevent your nature from being the cause of your doom one day,” he wasn’t aware of the promises he was making, but he was aware that he’d never break them. His word was his bond, and of that he was proud. 

And slowly, with the faintest hint of hesitance, he brought his tiny daughter up, and with his lips he met her soft forehead, feeling the warmth of her soft skin on his lips as he kissed her for the first time. The feelings rushing through his body as the signature smell of a newborn mixed with how soft her skin… It was overwhelming, to put it mildly. 

“I give you my word that no harm will ever come your way, Clover.” He handled her softly, going from having her cradled into his arms to having her chest to chest against his shirt, being able to shield her from the rest of the world with only his two hands. That was how little his daughter was. “I just wish your mother could be here, with us. I… I know things weren’t the best between us, I guess she’s just scared of me still.” He slowly patted her back, letting instinct take over him. “I just hope no one is ever scared of you. It’s an awful feeling, I absolutely do not recommend it,” 

She was squirming a little, not liking being moved but ultimately finding some comfort in being chest to chest with her father. After all, the devil was pretty warm, and his chest was for sure far more comfortable than a crib. 

“I just hope I’m able to let you know that I’m here. And that I’m not going anywhere, no matter how scared I might feel,” and with that he ended their unidirectional chat, patting the newborn on the back as gently as he possibly could as the little girl still sought for something to suckle onto.

He couldn’t really recall how long he’d spent on that recliner, holding Clover close to his chest and essentially covering her whole back and head with just his two hands, letting her be held. His head had gone places. He had tried hard to find an answer to the question of why he was so afraid of parenting, coming up empty. He had thought of Chloe and threatened his father a couple of times in the process, if harm were to come her way. He gave his daughter her first meal, a bottle of warm milk that a nurse had given him and instructed him how to administer before leaving him to it. He’d been terrified of having Clover choke on it since she was so little, but he eventually managed to have her drink one third of it before she fell asleep. It wasn’t too much, since her stomach wasn’t used to handling food just yet. 

Nurses came in and out of the small, semi-private little room, asking him for information as they tried to get Clover admitted. Turns out that when you’re born outside of a hospital or with a lack of witnesses to your birth, it was far too difficult to get the basic documentation started. Thankfully, he was the devil. If they ever had any problems because of that he would be able to solve them in a dime. 

He even sang to her. 

First, he resorted himself to songs in English, songs he knew to be calming and relaxing, although not necessarily lullabies. It truly was unnecessary, Clover fell asleep almost immediately after having her bottle, but Lucifer just felt the need to channel his emotions in any way he could. Otherwise, he was afraid he might burst. 

However, there came a moment where English slowly faded and the ancient, not-known-to-mankind language that he used to speak back when he lived in the Silver City rose up. He, without really noticing, started singing songs that his mother used to sing, lullabies so perfect and harmonic that it also made him want to sleep too. They were beautiful to a level no human could begin to understand, and his throat was using muscles he had forgotten he had to be able to sing various notes at the same time. If Clover hadn’t fallen asleep when she had her first meal, she surely would’ve fallen asleep with that. 

He was about to fall asleep himself when a doctor pulled open the glass door, finding him there. 

“Mr. Morningstar?” He asked, trying to make sure he was talking to the right man. 

“Yes, that’s me,” he quickly shook himself out of his sleepiness, finding it in him to pay attention to the man. 

“I’m Doctor Allan Francis,” he introduced himself, pulling on his coat to look presentable. “I have news about Chloe Decker.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Next chapter's title is *drumrolls* "A sense of a newfound normalcy". Hope you liked what you've read!
> 
> Take care!


	6. A sense of a newfound normalcy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi babies!! I'm sorry I'm posting 10 minutes late but I had the hectiest day!
> 
> I'm so happy about how the elections are going! Hopefully tomorrow we'll have some more information as to who is the US's next president (hopefully Biden)
> 
> I hope you like this chapter just as much as I loved writing it! It holds a special place in my heart!
> 
> As always, a big thank you to Chany28 for getting these 4,7k words all polished and nice before I posted them!
> 
> Without further adieu, I'll leave you to chapter 6!
> 
> All my love, Rena.

Chloe’s eyes opened slowly, with a direct proportionality to the velocity in which her mind was starting to think. 

Through her eyelids she could see it was bright outside, if the intense orange color covering her field of sight told her everything. It was eerily calm, no sounds, no sensations, no smells. She had no sense of time whatsoever. She could have easily been like that for a few seconds, or a few hours, and she didn’t care enough to ask. 

Her senses came back to her unhurriedly, the same way morning dew would form on the petals of a rose. First, it was the smell. It was always the smell. Everything around her smelled to be impeccably clean, though not in a nice way, the scent of disinfectant and rubbing alcohol growing stronger by the minute. Soon after came the hearing, but there wasn’t much to hear. Just a soft voice humming something unintelligible, like a lullaby, in a language she just couldn’t recognize. It took her a couple of seconds to realize that a) that voice was very familiar and b) not understanding the language went beyond her degree of consciousness. It was a language she’d never heard before. Ultimately, she was able to feel things around her and position herself in the world. 

She was laying on a bed with very soft sheets and covers, that she was sure of. There was a mild but constant ache on her lower stomach and her chest, and her head hurt. She felt dizzy, so much that the thought of opening her eyes was almost unthinkable. 

She then did, however. She opened her eyes when she realized that the weight of her baby was no longer crushing her ribs like it usually would whenever she lay down on her back. 

Her hands went immediately towards her belly, finding it still swollen but not nearly as much as it had been just hours before, and not nearly as hard. It was soft and squishy in all the wrong places, deflated. 

That was when the memories from the night before started dawning on her, making her remember the way she gave birth in the backseat of her car with none other than Lucifer Morningstar to assist her. 

When her eyes opened, it took them a little while to get adjusted to the light of the early morning. It was around five am, but strangely, Chloe felt like it was later. Maybe because the room was brighter than it should have been. 

As focus graced her eyes with its utilities, they landed on a figure on her left. And that was for one, an image she’d never thought she’d see, and also, a picture so beautiful she wanted to remember it forever. 

Lucifer was sitting on an armchair, this one far plushier and more comfortable than the one down by triage, and was holding a tiny bundle that was so small it managed to get lost in between his big and strong arms. He was looking down at the baby, singing in a tongue Chloe would dare to say was not of this world, and there was such peace and tranquility inside that room that Chloe almost could feel all her worries washing away. 

Aside from that, though, what also contributed to making that picture just a touch more magical, was the way Lucifer and the little bundle were surrounded by a bright, heavenly light. It had a golden tinge to it, making it warm and welcoming, and upon further inspection Chloe realized the light wasn’t just surrounding them, it was coming from them. From within them. 

Her daughter was there. She was there and, without having seen her even once, Chloe already knew she was perfect. 

And she was being held by the devil. Her daughter was in the arms of the devil. 

And just as panic threatened to arise within her, just as the thought of getting herself out of the bed, snatching her little one away from his hands and running away crossed her mind, she remembered the night before. 

He had jumped in front of a flying axe, knowing very well that it could kill him because she was nearby, all to protect her. To stop her from being killed, when she was sure about the fact that she couldn’t be. He had done that; he had been willing to sacrifice his life to ensure her safety. How could that man be that awful thing history and popular culture said he was?

The devil was holding his daughter. The devil was holding their daughter and that was enough for her to calm down. 

“What are you doing?” She had intended for it to sound just a touch more inquisitive, but it was only after trying to talk that she realized her words were slurry. It was probably the pain medication. 

“Oh, hello there, Detective.” Lucifer greeted her, smiling up at her. The heavenly light coming off of him dimmed just a little, but it wasn’t entirely gone. She would need to ask about that. “Did you have a good night’s sleep?”

“What… what happened?” Her mind was still foggy, and there were patches here and there on her memories from the night before. “Is that…” things inside her mind made so much more sense, but she just couldn’t express them. 

“Oh, well yes. I believe you two are due to meet already,” he stood up swiftly from the armchair and walked over to the detective’s bed, their daughter safely cradled into his arms. “Detective, I present to you, your daughter,” he said as he lowered the baby girl onto Chloe’s arms, startling the little imp just a bit. 

“Oh my god. Hi, princess,” Chloe greeted her, holding her with ease as she had held a newborn in the past. If only Lucifer had had some of that expertise back when that doctor shoved Clover into his arms. “You’re so tiny and cute, how did I make you?” 

She was entranced by her daughter, meeting her for the very first time. Well… at least officially. She had to fight back some tears as she took the little newborn in. She was on the verge of falling asleep, probably due to Lucifer’s gorgeous singing, and she was blinking slowly up to her mom, curling her little fingers into fists. She was still only wearing a diaper and covered by a swaddle, seeing as she was less than eight hours old and doctors had to keep an eye out for her. She’d been born prematurely and the chances of getting jaundice had escalated for the newborn. That, a hat with a huge bow on top of it and a plastic anklet and infant tracker were everything that was dressing her. 

Chloe lifted up her hat just a little to look at her hair, and was surprised to find that there wasn’t much of it, and that it resembled her own rather than Lucifer. She didn’t know why but she had always imagined her baby to have Lucifer’s hair while pregnant, given that it was so thick and black. 

“She is beautiful, isn’t she?” She heard Lucifer’s voice coming from beside her; the devil leaning over to stare at his daughter. 

Chloe couldn’t help it but look up at him with raw confusion in her blue eyes. She was, forgive the redundancy, confused. He was still shining dimly in whatever light that was, and he had a smile on his face that Chloe had never seen. It was a smile true to his heart, it was pure. 

“What are you still doing here?” And well, she had meant for it to sound a little more welcoming than that. Instead of expressing her confusion, it expressed annoyance, and she truly couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or not. 

“Excuse me?” His light died down almost immediately as his eyes made contact with hers, the smile also wiping itself out. 

“I…” she couldn’t look him in the eye, she just couldn’t. She had sounded so ungrateful, even if she hadn’t meant to. After all, the only reason why her daughter didn’t spend the first eight hours of her life alone in the NICU was him. “Sorry, I… I just didn’t think I’d see you when I woke up. That’s all,” 

“Oh well, I…” yeah, they still sucked at communicating. “Hopefully it’s a great kind of surprise,” she pictured him jumping in front of the axe yet again, knowing he could die but not hesitating to do so. He would die just so she could get to live. 

“It’s odd,” she commented, staring at her baby girl. “But then again, everything you do is odd, so…” he agreed, giving her a tight smile and a scoff that had meant to be a laugh. To hopefully get his point across, he took a seat on Chloe’s spacious hospital bed, also staring lovingly at the newborn. 

“This one might be the oddest yet, though,” Chloe looked up at him as if he had grown a third eye. 

“What do you mean?” She voiced, quickly getting her eyes back to her daughter, in love with her small little face. “I mean, you do know you don’t have to stay, right?” She clarified, implicitly bringing their conversation from the night before to the table. “You don’t owe us anything.” She felt it coming within her, the need to make things clear between them and her daughter. “Look, I… I’m incredibly thankful for everything you did last night. Neither of us would be here if it weren’t for you, and for that I’ll always be in debt to you,” she took a deep breath in, feeling overwhelmed by his presence. “I… I’m not sure you’re aware of everything you did for me and… and little Clover here last night, so… I don’t want to hold you up anymore,” she tried smiling, but as always, her heart told her it wished he stayed. “Go host an orgy or something, you’re free to go. We can talk about child support later,”

“That’s the thing, though,” he took a deep breath in, watching as Clover blinked more slowly each and every time until she went to sleep, comfortable in the heat of her mother’s arms. “I don’t want to go host an orgy,” 

It took Chloe by surprise hearing him say something like that. Particularly because of the choice of words, and also because once again, she was at the epitome of confusion. 

“What do you mean now?” She asked without looking at him. She didn’t want to get her hopes up. 

“I... I just… I might as well catch you up with what happened last night and tell you the conclusions I’ve drawn,” he hesitated. He was just as lost as she was, if not even more. 

“That would be amazing, thank you,” and so she’d listen. 

“After you passed out on me, a team of doctors came to the car and took Clover, shoved her into my arms and took you to the OR because you had a tear in your… In your… What’s it called this organ you female humans have to grow babies?” Chloe would never say it out loud, but now that she really felt like she knew him, angel wings and all, it was just all the more endearing when he’d get things wrong. He was this timeless being, thousands upon thousands of years old, and he didn’t know the word ‘uterus’. 

“My uterus?” She contributed, unable to keep the small smile that rose to her face from showing up. 

“That’s it, yes. They had to take you to the OR to fix that and they took Clover somewhere to examine her and what else,” then, he did something Chloe was truly not expecting. 

He reached over her daughter and gave her a finger to hold on to, which the baby took gladly. She was fast asleep and it was just a reflex, but it brought a wide smile to Lucifer’s face nonetheless. Those last eight hours with her had taught him millions of little things about babies. 

“Somewhere around the time someone shoved her into my arms and when I had to choose whether to go after you or after her, I… I really don’t think I can do this feeling justice. At least not verbally,” and that’s when Chloe sort of understood what he meant. He had fallen in love with Clover, with her daughter. “I just… I just know that, come what may, I don’t think I’ll be able to stay away from her as I initially wanted to,” 

“Let me see if I understand,” Chloe started, her heart relishing in Lucifer’s words. “You’re saying you don’t want to be uncle Lucifer anymore?” 

“Essentially,” he sighed, and Chloe started seeing how, very shyly, that same beautiful light she had woken up to started emanating from him again. It came out of his every pore, and it also didn’t, it was truly magical to see. 

However, something else she noticed in that moment that she hadn’t noticed before, was that through the finger Clover was holding tightly traveled the light, making her glow in that exact same way. Like an angel. Like her father. 

“I just…” he was embezzled, Chloe could tell. “I got this feeling when I first held her. She stared up at me and it felt like she was staring into my soul, and then I didn’t want to put her down,” 

“Welcome to the club,” 

She didn’t know how she felt anymore. She was happy, confused, madly in love with her baby girl’s face, and deeply surprised. 

She had never expected Lucifer to be one of those people that came around the idea of parenthood the moment they saw their child. Honestly, she even came close to being one hundred percent sure something of the sort would never happen to him. That he was just wired not to feel that kind of attachment. But then again, she had woken up to him rocking her daughter to sleep, singing to her a song in a tongue that was so intricate she was positive it wasn’t from this plane of existence. 

“Look, I… The last thing I want is to push you into something you don’t want. Something you’re not sure of. But… I want you to know that, should you have me, I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere. I just can’t,” she smiled softly, not knowing fully what he meant by those words. 

“Okay,” and she agreed because, how could she not? He had opened up his heart to her, he had shown him he wasn’t this monstrous creature she should be afraid of. He’d shown her he could be compassionate, sympathetic, beautiful both inside and out. Was he the best qualified being to become a parent? No, absolutely not, but they could get there. All they would need was time. Love was already there, even if Lucifer hadn’t explicitly said he loved Clover. 

“Phew, that’s a relief,” he joked, slightly going back to his usual persona. 

“Why do you say so?” And yeah, well… Sometimes they would have to acknowledge the whole part of her fleeing the country for six months after finding out, and him not talking to her for three weeks when he realized her child was his. Sometime, but maybe not then. 

“Well… up until yesterday things weren’t exactly great between us.” He said, brushing over the issue very lightly. “I mean, we still have a lot of things to talk about and such, but at least you’re letting me be part of both your lives. That’s progress,”

“Lucifer, whether I want it or not, she’s just as much your daughter as she’s mine. It’s not about me wanting you in our lives, which I do, but about your right to be here. I won’t take that away from you. Ever. Devil or not,” Lucifer gave her one of those smiles he kept for when things were real. That kind of smile he kept short but sweet, and that was far more visible through his eyes than through his lips. She would never admit it out loud, but those were her favorites. 

“Well… Thank you either way, Detective.” He was at a loss for words, to say the least. That woman would always keep on surprising him, no matter what.

“I… Look, I was scared of you, alright?” Lucifer scoffed a laugh, throwing his head back a little. 

“Really? Because I couldn’t tell,” he said sarcastically, his mood being far better than it was before. He was showing himself to be more like himself, and that made things inside the room feel a little less tense. Chloe was thankful for that.

“Very funny,” she said, also going back to being more like herself. “Point is… I’m not scared of you anymore. I don’t doubt that anything that comes out of your mouth is anything but the truth. Not anymore,” They were fighting against the atmosphere in the room; the conversation wanting to pull them into a deeper level of trust, and them trying desperately to avoid it. “History… Religion, they don’t know you. I do,” She looked down at her baby girl. Their baby girl. She was proof of the trust she’d invested on him. “Or at least I hope so,”

“I...” Lucifer hesitated. She’d been afraid of him after only seeing his wings. His angelic, majestic side. What about when she saw all that there was of him? “There’s… What you’ve seen of me… My wings, they’re the nice part.” He started, wanting to come clean. If they were going to have someone as important as Clover between them for the rest of their lives, there were things that needed to be talked through. 

“What do you mean?” And she sort of, with her very limited, human mind, could see where the conversation was headed. 

“What you’ve seen of me is all I can show you right now.” And he meant his wings. He couldn’t understand why but his devil face never came back, and although it had been a huge part of his identity for, well… a long time, he now could say that he was fine without it. “There’s another side of me. It’s monstrous, it’s...” and yet, as much as he could say he didn’t miss it, he could still say it was pretty triggering. “Right now I can’t show it to you, because when I woke up in that desert it was gone. What I was going to show you the day I went missing is the beast I… My punishment. My devil face.”

Chloe looked up at him with an unusual light in her eyes. A light Lucifer hadn’t seen in a long, long while. Her eyes were curious, not afraid, and forgiving the redundancy, it was a sight for sore eyes. 

“My monstrous side. My devil face… That’s not all that I am. At least I hope not,” Chloe smiled small at him, her heart rejoicing in content as it had gotten what it wanted. “But my angelic side… That’s not all that I am either. I’m my own person, and to be judged by my own actions is all I want from humanity,”

“I believe you,” and she did. She truly did. She believed every word that came out of his mouth, every smile his lips formed, every look he ever gave her. “You know… You two were shining back then,” she commented, eager to know what that was all about. “You kind of still are right now,”

“Oh,” and just like that the faint glimmer of heavenly light disappeared, leaving them with just the lights on the ceiling. “That’s odd,”

“Hey, it's okay. It’s very beautiful, actually. I just wanted to know what that was, because you seemed to have passed that onto her,” Lucifer looked at Clover as if she had grown a third eye. From all of his non-human attributes, that one was the one he was expecting her to get the least.

“That’s really, really odd. I hadn’t noticed,” he seemed to be awe-struck, not even believing he still had it himself. Truth to be told, he thought he had lost it right after the fall.

“What is it?” Chloe asked curiously, wanting to know why Lucifer and their daughter seemed to just shine when they were together. Quite literally. 

“I… Back when I was still loyal to my father and living in the Silver City, I was the archangel tasked with creating light,” Chloe took a deep, sharp breath in, not having expected that to be the answer at all. “Father hadn’t been much more specific than that, in fact, the only way I had to know it was me was because all of my siblings’ wings are in different shades of beige, brown, gray and black. Mine are the only ones that are white and actually bright,”

“That is… Interesting,” she commented, staring down at her daughter as to avoid the intense eyes of the devil.

“I spent eons practicing, trying to come up with something that would please Father. And so, when I actually came up with the sun, I had also filled up the rest of the skies with stars,” how ironic. Something as beautiful as stars, something humanity had loved and treasured for millennia, had been created by the being they feared the most. “That’s why I was called The Lightbringer, back when I was still in Heaven.”

“So… What you’re saying is that the reason why you and my daughter were shining just a couple of minutes ago was because you just wanted to create a star? Out of the blue?” Chloe was a mixture of amazed and terrified. What if, a couple of years down the road, Clover decided she wanted to create a star in the middle of her classroom and ended up wiping the whole planet Earth?

“Not exactly. I can’t create a star involuntarily. Believe me, it would’ve been far easier to create the sun, had things been that way. It’s just… The power responds to how I feel, and since I’m nauseatingly happy right now, well… It’s there,” Chloe nodded, acting like she understood everything that had just come out of Lucifer’s mouth. “It’s weird, though, because I thought I didn’t have it in me anymore. And it’s even weirder because back then I would notice I was glowing, but not brightly enough for others to see it,”

“Maybe you’re just really happy,” Chloe concluded, slowly and softly sliding a finger through her daughter’s cheek. 

“I can only assume so,” they smiled small, and upon the non-verbal approval, Lucifer started glowing again, this time far dimmer as he was now aware he was doing so. He was beautiful, he was glowing, he was a pure truth.

And then, all too suddenly, with the realization that she believed him and that Lucifer deserved to be believed, with the realization that Lucifer was a being of light and that it was difficult to find anything purer than him, came rushing the guilt through Chloe’s heart.

She had wanted to banish him to Hell, to force him into a place of torment just because humans once had the selfish need to blame their wrongdoings on someone other than themselves. And it had been him. 

It was a painful sensation that contrasted against the immense happiness and joy she felt. Like a stain of bright red wine on an all too white rug, it was spreading, taking over the pure joy of welcoming a child into the world. There wasn't enough air, there wasn’t enough of anything, and she needed to go. She needed to torture herself for coming close to betraying the one man that had done everything for her, and would do anything in a heartbeat. How could she do that? How could she have come as close as an inch of banishing him into Hell?

And the worst part of it all, was that she was positive she would never be able to grow a pair of balls and tell him about it. She would never have the chance to apologize because she would never dare threaten the semblance of stability they had just found. Had they not had a child together, and she might have had less to lose, but with Clover now being a part of both of their lives, she couldn’t risk having her daughter lose her dad.

So, she would just stay quiet, suffering alone, drowning in her own guilt until it hopefully went away.

The rest of the day went by as uneventfully as the day after bringing a child into the world could go. They had family visit them a couple of hours into the morning, namely Trixie and Dan, given that few more people even knew Clover was a thing. Ella stopped by sometime in the afternoon to give them a couple of hugs and some gifts, but she knew not to stay too long, given all the uncomfortableness mothers felt after delivery, and wanting to give the new parents some time to get to know their child. Amenadiel and Linda followed, having found out about Clover’s existence only a mere twenty-four hours ago, when Lucifer decided he was done with being in Canada. They weren’t as considerate as Ella had been and stayed for a little while longer, demanding explanations on all fronts.

One of the questions that inevitably came, was about Lucifer’s decision to be a part of Clover’s life as a father figure. Even those that didn’t know about his little crisis during his escapade assumed that he would want nothing to do with a newborn, so the fact that he had been there and had literally held her for eight consecutive hours had been nothing short of a surprise. Both Linda and Amenadiel were proud, needless to say, but the mere fact that Clover had been the result of an angel and a human woman being together was worrying, nonetheless. 

Trixie had been over the moon about her new little sister, having wished for one throughout the entirety of Chloe’s pregnancy. She visited in the morning and after school hours, once with Dan and once alone. She begged them to let her hold Clover, but Chloe just had to tell her no, even if it broke her heart seeing how excited she was. Clover had been mildly premature and was only five pounds five, three pounds lighter than what Trixie had been. Chloe was still adjusting herself to having a newborn so little to take care of, and despite the fact that said newborn was a celestial being, she still felt just as soft and fragile as any newborn would. So, Trixie had to make do with touching her and giving her kisses, not much else. 

The voice of Chloe’s guilt had been slightly dimmed over the course of the day, given that having a newborn and getting visits from a nine-year-old and all of your friends could be very time-consuming. However, when the time to go to sleep came around, Chloe found herself alone with her own thoughts. 

Clover had fallen asleep on her father’s naked chest; Lucifer having insisted on doing skin to skin with her because he had read on a website that it was a good practice to establish a bond with newborns. However, neither of them had counted on Lucifer falling asleep, too, and now all Chloe had with her were her own thoughts, and the beautiful image of the devil sleeping with a tiny newborn on his naked chest, glowing dimly as their chests rose up and down slowly.

It was nothing short of torture for her. But it was also nothing short of the best day of her life. 

What had been done was now irreversible. No one was able to undo all the harm Chloe had intended to do to Lucifer, it was just impossible. However, she could try to move forward and hope that someday they were able to talk about it, maybe when Clover grew older and the bitterness of her six-month long vacation had completely worn off. After all, Lucifer was just a very powerful being, wronged by all of humanity, with a very dysfunctional family and a lot of trust issues. He just needed to be understood, and maybe with time, Chloe would be able to do that for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter's title is... *drumrolls*: "The beginning of the rest of our lives"
> 
> Take care!


	7. The beginning of the rest of our lives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi babies! I’m sorry for the delay but I just got around posting!
> 
> I actually, surprisingly, don’t have too much to say. Guess I’m too tired to even think coherent thoughts hahaha. 
> 
> Love you all and thank you to Chany28 for proof reading this like a thousand times. She’s the best and you should deffo head over to her profile and check her fanfics ^^. 
> 
> All my love, Rena.

“You seriously have no idea how much I want to spend a night in my own bed,” said Chloe when getting out of her car. 

That had been a wild week, to say the least. 

It was half past six in the evening and Chloe and Clover had been finally discharged. Having had a tear of Chloe’s magnitude, and having had a slightly premature baby made their stay at the hospital last for five days more than they would have originally wanted. Lucifer, of course, paid for everything and gave Chloe and Clover every possible upgrade he could, wanting them to be comfortable. 

Chloe’s recovery didn’t have too many setbacks. Just the once, when she tried getting up to go to the bathroom for the very first, a stitch came undone but it was nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a bit of local numbing and the hands of an OB/GYN. Luckily it hadn’t been one of the stitches further up, otherwise she would have had to go back into the OR. 

Clover, however, did have a bit of an issue. Barely past forty-eight hours after her birth, the neonatologist found her to be a little too yellow for his liking, and a couple of blood tests later she had been diagnosed with jaundice. Nothing too bad, as five days of UV light treatment helped her get healthy enough to go home, and besides, the doctors were able to keep track of the weight she gained, seeing as that was another concerning topic for the littlest one. Five days of NICU for Clover and five extra days of admission for Chloe were all they needed to certify they were healthy enough to go home. 

Lucifer had never once stepped away from their side. He had taken Chloe’s very welcoming words very seriously, and actually, it was only then that Chloe realized just how much she liked not being alone. Most of the time Lucifer was pretty instinctive, but yet sensible, to their daughter’s demands, and he would meet them almost as efficiently as Chloe would. Taking into account the fact that he’d never been near a newborn before, they could say it was progress. He was, indeed, a very fast learner. 

Clover’s full name ended up being Clover Morningstar-Decker, having taken both their last names per Lucifer’s demand. Whatever it was that he had felt toward his daughter when he first held her had been strong, and it had been intending to stay, seeing as Lucifer was completely serious about meeting all of his responsibilities. Chloe was proud, to put it mildly. 

They had agreed they’d live under the same roof for a while, just until they got used to coparenting. Besides, the newborn stage and overall the first year just flew by, and Chloe didn’t want Lucifer to miss that. At least just for the first couple of months. Besides, they were friends, they could perfectly live under the same roof as roommates. Lucifer would just have to put up with Chloe’s rules and all, which, if Maze had been able to then he should as well, and Chloe would have to put up with Lucifer’s expensive taste and shenanigans. If they could be the parents to the first ever human-angel hybrid, then they should be able to cohabitate the same space, or so they thought.

“At least you’re had a bed to sleep on. I had to sleep on an armchair for a week and my back is killing me,” Lucifer answered, getting out of the driver’s seat of Chloe’s car —which he had sent to get cleaned up after Clover’s birth—. Never in a million years would he have thought that he’d sleep on an armchair for a week, just to be near his newborn daughter.

He unbuckled the car seat with no difficulty at all, just as Chloe finally managed to step out of the car. She had been instructed not to do any kind of heavy lifting —also known as, not lifting anything heavier than her daughter—, and over all just to try and move as little as humanly possible. It was kind of a pain for the detective in question, since she had always prided herself on how independent she was, but still… Her situation made her feel thankful she wasn’t alone.

“You’re being upgraded to the couch until Maze moves out, so I’d say it’s not looking any better for you,” Things had gotten back to being sort of how they were before Chloe found out. Their usual bickering had begun at around day three, and now they could tease each other freely, for the most part. 

“Bloody hell!” He exclaimed, but he smiled, nonetheless. He’d sleep on the floor for the rest of eternity if it meant he got to stay close to Clover. 

“You’re the lord of Hell. Stop being a whoosie,” She slowly walked up to him and then, together, they made their way into Chloe and Maze’s shoebox of an apartment, smiling softly as it felt nice to finally be out of the hospital.

“Well, I’m retired, Detective. And let me tell you, over these past six years my back’s gotten used to my bed. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep at all if I ever have to go back to Hell,” He took out the key he had to Chloe’s apartment —one he’d made back when he first made a copy for her car keys— and opened the door for her, earning a scowl on her side because, of course, he also had a key to her apartment. At least it was something they could check off the list of things they still had to do.

“Welcome home,” she said, smiling softly as she stepped into her house, taking a deep breath and relishing in the scent of her house. After smelling disinfectants for a week, it was really pleasant getting to be in her own home. “Maze? Trixie?” She called out for them, knowing they would be there. 

“Mommy!” Came rushing through the living room door her nine-year-old, making a beeline to her hips and hugging her tightly. She wasn’t going to lie, it had been uncomfortable, borderline painful, to have her excited oldest daughter to hug her that way.

“Hi, Monkey,” she said happily, not letting Trixie know that her hug had hurt her a little. She wouldn’t be able to deal with saying that to her. Trixie had been upgraded to big sister, and with a lot of good, always came a lot of bad.

“What are you doing here? Why are you not at the hospital?” She asked curiously, resting her chin right on top of Chloe’s belly button and looking up at her. 

“Clovie and I got discharged, baby. I sent both Maze and you a text. You seriously didn’t get it?” Trixie nodded, making Chloe feel even more uncomfortable. She just didn’t have the heart to push her away.

“That’s awesome!” The not so little girl finally released her hold on her mother and moved on to the devil, curious about the car seat he was holding and wanting to see her baby sister. “Maze and I were about to order takeout. What do you want to eat?”

“No, no, no, spawn. I don’t know where you’ve been, go wash your hands,” Lucifer instructed, lifting the car seat up so that Trixie’s usually sticky hands wouldn’t land on the newborn. The internet said babies needed clean environments, so did the doctors, so he would abide by that. Trixie obeyed and ran towards the bathroom, leaving Chloe and Lucifer with Maze, who had just barely stepped inside the living room. 

“Can we order pizza? I’m dying to get some carbs into this body,” said Chloe, beginning to settle inside her home. She’d been put on bedrest but, of course, she wouldn’t follow orders. 

“Actually, I have to leave,” Maze voiced, walking up to them and looking at Clover from a distance. She would never say it but seeing a baby so small made her afraid of interacting with it. She was terrified of the possibility of ever hurting her, which meant she had stayed at arm’s length from her. Hopefully, that would change with time. “Lux can’t run itself, right?”

“Just so you know, Maze, I’m really grateful that you’ve taken on the administrative duties at Lux. I’ll be back as soon as we have things settled with Clover and such,” Lucifer said, lowering his arm once the oldest spawn was out of sight. 

“Yeah, whatever. Just thought you needed time to be on your own, and I have a really hot-” at that last word, Chloe already knew she didn’t want to hear any of it.

“Okay, okay! We get it. Just go have some fun; you deserve it. Thank you for babysitting Trixie,” just as she named her, her daughter came running through the door with her hands still damp from washing them.

“You’re leaving, Maze?” She asked her, slowing down as she came close to the circle of adults. 

“Yeah, Trix. Have some stuff over at Lux, but I’ll see you around, okay?” Trixie nodded and then they proceeded to share their signature handshake, ending on them sliding open their throats and pulling their tongues out. It made Lucifer’s worries about whether he’d be able to ever have that kind of bond with either Trixie or Clover fade away. At least slightly. “You can’t use my room, you touch any of my things and you’re dead,” she said to Lucifer before walking out, aware that him and Chloe weren’t exactly together, but not caring enough to let him sleep on her bed. She eyed Lucifer warily as she walked away; the sound of her knives clinking as she moved. It was truly a mystery how she managed to hide so many weapons in so little clothing. 

“I guess that means it’s only us four,” Chloe mumbled, making a beeline for the couch and having Lucifer following behind her, placing Clover’s car seat on top of the coffee table.

“I’ll go unload the car boot,” Lucifer mumbled and then left, aware that Chloe couldn’t and shouldn’t be doing any strenuous work.

Chloe softly took Clover out of her car seat, bringing her into her arms as Trixie sat beside her, still drooling in excitement over her little sister. Trixie carefully touched her over her hat and offered her the pacifier she’d spit out, but the sleeping newborn didn’t take it. She was just too comfortable to be bothered.

“She’s so beautiful. I still can’t believe I have a sister,” Trixie said softly, putting one of her slender fingers against one of Clover’s open palms and smiling widely when the one-week-old wrapped her tiny fist around her finger. 

“When I was your age it was my dream that grandpa and grandma would give me a little sister. I’m so happy you’re happy about welcoming her into our lives,” Trixie’s eyes never left her sister as Chloe spoke, but when she mentioned welcoming her into their lives, she felt like she had to look at her mother. 

“Her and Lucifer, right?” She asked, having taken it as something obvious. “I mean, I know he’s been in our lives for really long already, but now he’s officially part of our family, isn’t he? He’s Clovie’s dad,”

“I know… We should ask him if he wants to, though, okay?” She said, wondering what a life with Lucifer as a part of her family would be like. She had newly-found expectations now that Lucifer had decided he wanted to be a part of Clover’s life, but he hadn’t said anything about Chloe and Trixie. Surely, they would be living together for a couple of months, maybe even a whole year, so that kind of forced them into a family dynamic, but things could change so suddenly. Chloe didn’t even want to think about the moment where their co-parenting would be inevitably reduced to exchanging their child on a schedule. “Why don’t you go ahead and order a pizza from Bennie’s?”

“Don’t we have to wait to see what toppers Lucifer wants?” Trixie said, going over to grab the phone, nonetheless. 

“He only likes it with cheese, nothing else. Reminds you of someone?” Chloe couldn’t believe that a) she knew how Lucifer liked his pizza by heart and b) that him and her eldest daughter shared the same taste when it came to the popular Italian dish. 

“Just like me! Extra-large?” Chloe nodded at her eldest, bringing her focus to her youngest as the little baby awoke. She blinked slowly, not making a fuss or anything. She had proven out to be quite a quiet baby, only crying whenever it was of utmost necessity. She would just lay awake and stare at the ceiling with wide, newborn-gray eyes. 

“Hi, honey.” Chloe greeted her, laying her with her back on her thighs as the baby just stared up at nothing. She was so little it still managed to creep Chloe out. “How was your nap? You didn’t even realize we came home,” the newborn had slept all throughout their discharge, through the car ride and up until a mere five minutes after arriving at her new home. She would be awake for a while now. “You’re such an easy baby,” she said with her mom voice, cooing and smiling widely. 

“Who knew newborns needed all of this stuff? Now I know why parents complain that raising a child is so expensive.” Lucifer said as he came through the front door, carrying Clover’s stroller and diaper bag. A lot of things they had ordered for her had arrived at the hospital, and so they had to bring them home once discharged. Luckily, her bassinet was already settled in Chloe’s room. They could use almost any soft surface as a changing table and Clover had already gotten used to breastfeeding, so they didn’t need any bottles. They would survive for one night without assembling all of that stuff up. 

“You were the one to call them ‘Terrible taxing burdens’ once upon a time. Now you know why,” Chloe answered from her spot on the couch, feeling Lucifer walk behind her and lean over the backseat to stare at his daughter.

“How we managed to make her will never cease to amaze me,” and he meant both how extraordinary his daughter was, as well as the subtle hint to their only night together. It only took one night and several rounds of mind-blowing sex to get them to where they were, and Lucifer could honestly say he had never been happier. 

“I know. It still blows my mind to think that Trixie was this little once, and that I also made her,” she was so thankful they were in healthy, friendship-resembling terms. Things weren’t quite like they used to, having now five pounds, five ounces of joy added to their lives, but hopefully one day they would get there. 

“I truly don’t understand how the spawn came out looking the way she did having Daniel as a parent. You’re beautiful, so on that note I have zero doubts. Thankfully, the balance came tipped out your way,” Chloe chuckled lightly, but still did her usual eyeroll to Lucifer’s out of place comment. Maybe it was the comment itself, or the compliment that didn’t go by unnoticed, but it made her feel warm in the chest.

She didn’t know how she felt when looking at Lucifer under a romantic light, at least not anymore. That one time they spent the night together made her hope that they could have a future together, but then he went off to Las Vegas and came back married to a stripper, so her hopes had been crushed, to put it mildly. In the interval of time where her hopes and heart were crushed, and the moment she found out that everything was as true as it could possibly get, they had managed to go back to the relationship they had before sleeping together, and truth be told, there was nothing she wanted more than to go back to how things were. Now, going from that to actually seeing Lucifer under a romantic light again was a long stretch.

She just wasn’t sure about anything anymore. She wasn’t sure how she felt about him other than not being scared, she wasn’t sure how he felt about her, she wasn’t sure if he even could develop feelings towards a human since he was an archangel. True, they had slept together before, but that could have just been to satisfy his carnal desire, to get rid of his not-so-proverbial blue balls. But then again, when he walked into a poisoned room to save the lives of Dr. Carlisle’s last two victims, he had hugged her and confirmed for himself that everything was real. So why would he then go away for two weeks and come back with Candy hooked to his arm? Chloe just had to get used to the fact that there were things she would just never understand, and she didn’t like things she couldn’t understand.

Truth was, seeing him interact with Clover for that past week had brought up to the surface feelings she hadn’t felt since she had Trixie. And that had been over nine years ago. It made her feel warm inside knowing that both of her daughters could count on their fathers for the rest of their lives, much like she would’ve wanted to. Lucifer was like a bomb, always threatening to go off and destroy everything surrounding it, but eerily enough, Chloe was sure he had meant every word he had said when he promised he’d never step away from Clover’s life, no matter what. Knowing he had spent Clover’s first eight hours of life with her sleeping on his chest, hearing him sing to her in a foreign tongue when he thought she wasn’t watching, seeing how attentive and soft he was around her, it just made her all the more happy. Witnessing that had allowed her to see him under a different light, only that she wasn’t sure how to label it. They still had far too many things to talk about and sort, but they would do it one step at a time and, for the first time, Chloe was okay with that.

They spent the rest of the evening eating pizza and talking about their new normal, tending to little Clover’s needs and just trying to enjoy the first day of the rest of their lives as much as humanly possible. 

Lucifer was the one to put Trixie to bed as Clover was nursing, and Chloe was still too unsure about their breastfeeding relationship to just stand up and go read her eldest a bedtime story. Trixie was able to understand it, and was actually thrilled to have Lucifer on bedtime story duty for that night only. He told her the story of how his ring came to be because the devil refused to ready any of the books on that child’s library, and with good reason. Trixie had already gone through all of them at least five times, besides it being time for a new story, Lucifer refused to read them on the grounds of them being far too obnoxious. 

Chloe didn’t mean to, but she overheard part of their conversation, where Trixie specifically asked him to become part of their family just as she and Chloe had talked about right after arriving home. She didn’t miss the softness in the devil’s voice when he told him that it would be his pleasure to be a part of her family from then on, and telling her she could count on him for whatever she needed. Maybe her hormones were just being mean to her, but she almost broke down crying as she burped her newborn daughter.

“Hey,” she greeted him when he swiftly came out of Trixie’s room; her newborn sat on her lap, a hand holding the baby forward and the other one patting her back very softly. She felt the need to wipe her eyes, but had no hands to do so. “Is she down?”

“She’s sleeping like a log,” the devil commented as he made his way towards the living room and sat across Chloe, watching her burp Clover. 

“Thank you. You didn’t have to,” she said, looking down at Clover to try and keep him from seeing the unshed tears of emotion in her eyes. 

“My pleasure. Though may I recommend updating the child’s library? The titles on there are awfully dull and extremely boring. I refuse to read any of that if I ever have to put her to bed again,” Chloe choked out a laugh, easily going back to her past mood instead of the overly emotional one. “I told her the story of how my ring has Lilith’s immortality inside it and that seemed to suffice,”

“If you keep telling her such intricate and long stories, she’s going to practically force you to be her personal storyteller, I’m telling you,” It would be nice, though, if Lucifer and Trixie could bond over bedtime stories. “Let her find out you can sing and you’re a lost cause,”

“Good point.” He agreed, letting his eyes land on his daughter. “I guess it wouldn’t be so bad, after all.” Chloe smiled small, stopping the mechanical motion of patting Clover’s back just to place her vertically on her chest.

“You know… We haven’t had the chance to properly talk about how we’re going to make things work with… Well, co-parenting and such. Do you think this is a good time?” truth be told, it was something Chloe needed to get over with. What better moment than when Trixie was asleep, and Clover was well on her way to slumber?

“I suppose we could discuss that, yes.” Lucifer agreed, sitting more comfortably on Chloe’s armchair. They were going to be living together for a while, that was all they knew. “May I begin with saying that moving to the penthouse is still a possibility. That or getting a new house altogether. This feels like far too small a place for two adults and two children.”

“And thank you for that, but I think it’ll be better for Trixie if we stay here. She’s had enough changes as it is with Clover being born and all. I don’t want to stress her.” Lucifer smiled softly at her, taking her side with her decision. Honestly he was just so happy that Chloe had even allowed him to be a part of their lives, he would just give in to whatever she wanted as long as he got to stay. “So… How are we going to do this after…? You know, after we get the hang of things?”

“I have a spare room in the penthouse that I was thinking of redecorating to accommodate Clover for the nights she spends with me, and then, well… I guess we could work out arrangements as we go. We’ll still work together, so we have that.” Chloe had never been more thankful to work with the fathers to her two daughters. It made the job of exchanging them and organizing far easier.

“Okay… Sure! We can totally work things out,” Probably Dan would get Trixie and Lucifer would get Clover on the same days, just so the girls could bond and grow closer while they were with Chloe, and that should work fine. Or at least they hoped so. 

“I know that legally I don’t have to give you child support because we’re both taking care of the little urchin, but either way, I do want to give you some money so you can get around. I don’t understand how you’ve managed to raise the big urchin with just a cop’s salary.” Lucifer informed, and just as she was about to say no, Lucifer spoke again. “And I’m not taking a no for an answer. The antichrist deserves to be spoiled,” he said with a smug smile, looking as Clover rested the full weight of her head on Chloe’s shoulder, unable to hold it up as she was only a week old. 

“It’s called responsible money administration. Not spending on unnecessary things, trying to save. You’re so eccentric you wouldn’t know,” she said with her voice small, liking the overall coziness of the room and the situation. “And since you’re already not giving me the chance to say no, then thank you.”

“You’re most welcome,” he smiled, almost the same way he used to. “Besides, I’ve denied myself of desire for millennia. Now that I can, I don’t see the harm on indulging a bit on the pleasures earth has to offer,”

“Good point.” They stayed in silence for a while, wanting to stare at each other but avoiding the other’s gaze whenever their eyes met, just like teenagers would. Seeing them like that, no one would guess it was a thirty-five year old woman and a timeless being sitting inside that livingroom.

“So… On this note of wanting to work things out…” Lucifer started. If he could, he would be sweating. “I wanted you to know that I’m sorry. For everything finding out about divinity put you through, for… Well, for finding out the way you did.”

“Thank you,” she blushed slightly as she looked down, hiding her face on her daughter’s side. “I mean… Yeah, it was really hard.”

“The night I went missing I was intending to tell you, you know? That whole ‘No more going backwards’ thing?” Chloe nodded, remembering all too well how she felt when she first heard that voicemail. It was the first time she had felt hope towards whatever it was they had left, romantically speaking. “And, although accidental, I don’t regret that the first divine thing you saw of me were my wings, instead of my devil face. Amongst other things,” He took a pause, clearly hinting at their night together. Chloe took a deep breath in after cackling a laugh. She kind of loved the fact that his sense of humor had always been the same both when she knew and when she didn’t. It made the memory of the things they lived feel just a tiny bit more real. “Actually, I’m glad I can’t even show it to you anymore.”

“Why even is that? I can’t deny that I’m kinda curious now,” Chloe followed, wanting to leave the seriousness out of the topic. She was acting more like Lucifer than Lucifer himself.

“I really don’t know. I… I haven’t been able to shift to my devil form after getting my wings back. It’s as if I’d never been burned by hellfire in the first place.” Chloe managed to keep in a shudder upon Lucifer’s mention of being burnt by hellfire. That must have been so painful for him. 

“You know… Maybe it’s for the better. Maybe you, subconsciously, don’t feel like you’re the devil anymore,” Chloe suggested, truly understanding not even a fraction of all that divinity entailed. Lucifer smiled softly but in a way that let her know that, to him, she couldn’t be further away from the truth.

“I wish it were that easy, Detective. Maybe doctor Linda would be able to give me my identity back if that were the case.” He sighed, trying to get himself comfortable in Chloe's armchair. “I just wish I knew what my father is up to. What he means by all this,”

Chloe smiled sympathetically as she heard him talk, feeling as her baby girl went to sleep on her arms, feeling something that wanted to resemble normalcy but wasn’t quite there just yet.

However, in between all the chatting and getting up to date with each other, in between settling common cohabiting ground rules, neither of them ever noticed the man looking at them through the window.

Father Kinley sighed, crossing himself as he watched Chloe interact with the enemy, seeing the woman that had come to him in a time of uncertainty give in to the temptation the devil posed, holding what could only be known as the biggest abomination to ever place foot on earth. He had failed in the past, yes, and things had gotten significantly more complicated. Once upon a time he didn’t even want to give that child the chance to be born, therefore only having to take care of vanishing the devil. How would he manage to do so now that he had to deal with him and the antichrist? 

He looked up and channeled his inner prayer voice, apologizing to God for allowing the once brightest of all angels to keep roaming the earth, promising him it wouldn’t be long until both him and his offspring were back where they belonged. Hell. Only that this time, he would make sure he had no possible way out of it. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter’s title is... *drumrolls pleath*: “A step in the right direction”
> 
> Take care!


	8. A step in the right direction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi you beautiful souls! How are you!
> 
> I’m afraid I come bearing bad news. I’m in finals season and I’m currently writing chapter 11. I know I still have chapter 9 and 10 ready to post, but finals season ends on December 30th, which means these next two chapters will be uploaded with two weeks from each other. Chapter 9 will be up on Friday December 4th, and chapter 10 on Friday December 18th. By the time I upload chapter 10, I’ll tell you when I’ll upload chapter 11. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back to weekly updates by then. 
> 
> I’m sorry but I just can’t get enough time to write all the things I want. 
> 
> Bad news aside, sometime this December you’ll be getting a smutty stand-alone one-shot that I will post to a series. That way, every nasty thing that goes to my mind has a place to be here in AO3!
> 
> Without further adieu, I’ll leave you to Chapter 8 of Devil May Care. I hope you’ll like it!
> 
> All my love, Rena.

Adjusting to life with a baby was, by no means, easy. In fact, Lucifer was seriously thinking of putting it on the top ten hardest things he had ever done, right underneath the rebellion. However, the big difference was that fatherhood had contributed to his happiness significantly more than rebelling, which did kind of smoothen out the path.

It didn’t take long for them to discover that Clover was an easy baby, as Chloe would put it. Truth be told, Clover was the only baby Lucifer had known in his eons of life, and being her dad was nothing short of difficult and stressing, but learning from Chloe that it could be worse made him feel thankful. She only cried when it was extremely necessary, and woke up two or three times at night, which actually allowed them to get a decent night’s sleep. She’d had a little bit of colic but not too much, and had been cluster-feeding for about a week right around the time she turned one month old, but other than that they didn’t have that many challenges. Putting up with all of that had been worth it the minute they both saw Clover smile at them for the very first time. It had been the closest thing to magic they had experienced in their lifetimes. 

As the days went by, Clover looked more and more like her mother. She had a thick coat of dark blonde hair, soft eyebrows, pouty lips and her mother’s button nose. She was a miniature version of Chloe, every day that went by she looked more and more like her, and both her parents secretly loved that. However, in the eye department, Chloe’s blue pools were no match to Lucifer’s chocolate orbs. The two-month-old was well on her way to having her father’s eyes, a dark shade of brown already coating them, even if they still had time to change until she was six months old. Also, another thing they knew she would have were freckles, and those were all on Lucifer’s side, too. She had quite a respectable number of moles, and her skin seemed to be just like Lucifer’s, which allowed them to conclude that as soon as the little thing got exposed to the sun for more than half an hour, she’d get freckles.

Ironically enough, having a child together seemed to have been just what Lucifer and Chloe needed to get their partnership on track, both at work and at home. If he had known, they would’ve had Clover far earlier. Things just seemed to start falling into place as time went by. Chloe had finally ditched every single speck of fear she had ever felt towards him, and it had been replaced by her usual eyerolls and snorts at his remarks. He had gone back to being his devilish self, making all the same puns he usually would when alone, and limiting himself a bit when the big spawn was around. 

Partnership-wise, they were pretty confident they were going back to being the awesome team they had always been, making Los Angeles a safer place for all its residents from nine to five, and changing diapers and singing lullabies on the remaining hours. And they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Lucifer had learned to keep his more celestial bits under control, and he wouldn’t say it, but not being able to access his devil face had been a huge help towards achieving that. Only having his wings at his disposal, much like how things had been before he fell, made him think of taking a less scary approach when working cases, only so the number of murderers transferred into the psych ward would diminish. Chloe had been glad when he told her that. After all, prison was always worse than a mental hospital, and although they would always end up in Hell when their time came, what they did while they were on earth was still important, still deserving of punishment. 

On Chloe’s side, things had also taken a turn for the better. Seeing Lucifer interact with their daughter, seeing how much the little girl liked to spend her time in her daddy’s arms, seeing how gentle and caring he was with her, it all made her throw the few reservations she still had out of the window. There was no way that the man she was raising her youngest daughter with had done all the vile things humanity said he did, and still had it in him to treat a newborn with such gentleness. There was just no way, and she was glad she had drawn that conclusion.

At the first chance she got, she met up with Father Kinley and told him she wouldn’t be helping him anymore. She had never admitted to him that his daughter was, indeed, Lucifer’s. Upon her suspicions of what a priest of his sort would do to a baby he considered to be the antichrist, she treaded carefully and told him she wasn’t sure, always staying away from the topic of her daughter’s other progenitor. Kinley wasn’t stupid, though, and while he agreed not to take any measures towards the baby, he still managed to coax her into harming Lucifer. 

The first time she felt comfortable enough to leave Lucifer alone with Clover, she set up a meeting with Kinley and fixed her mistake, telling him that she would no longer be helping him. She knew Lucifer in a way no human ever would, not even himself, much less a Vatican investigator whose research and evidence was all circumstantial. The fact that Lucifer was vulnerable around her meant that he had changed, or that he was changing, and Chloe would not hesitate to help him along the way.

Saying that a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders was putting it mildly. She returned the vial she almost betrayed Lucifer with, although she had considered keeping it for herself in case Kinley was planning to harm Lucifer with or without her. She ultimately chose to give it back, knowing it would weigh on her far too much if she kept it, and also knowing that if Kinley was determined enough, he’d get some of that sedative again. 

Ever since then, things had been evolving towards an ultimate great, and they couldn’t be more glad that, as non-traditional and difficult as it may seem from the outside, their lives had taken the turn they took.

Two months had gone by since the night that Chloe gave birth in the backseat of her car, and Lucifer had truly forgotten of how his life was before her and Clover made their appearance, and decided to stay. Actually, when they made their appearance and Lucifer was the one that chose to stay. It was at the top of the list of things he didn’t and would never regret. It had been so difficult and yet so rewarding. 

Lucifer hadn’t set foot into a party in Lux for more than ten minutes since Clover had been born, and he couldn’t believe it, but he hadn’t had sex with anyone since. His only companion had been his right hand, and it had been limited to the occasions in which he could actually take as long as he wanted in the shower, which wasn’t much because newborns demanded an unfathomably large amount of time. No sex since the one time she slept with Lucifer had been Chloe’s daily bread, too, and although she wouldn’t mind experiencing the emotional vulnerability that came with sex every once in a while, she was perfectly content to please herself during the brief moments of peace and alone time she could find. 

All in all, the only department of their lives that was lacking some excitement was the sex department, and if one thing was sure, was that they would not be sharing that any time soon. Only once had been enough to let them know that the consequences it could have could be astronomical, and they didn’t want to risk their new-found stability.

On the present day, Clover was turning two months old and Chloe’s maternity leave was ending, which meant she would have to return to work on the next day. Lucifer had made the decision to stay by Chloe’s side, since his position as a civilian consultant didn’t apport a significant amount of money to his bank account and he wanted to be there. Having made that decision meant they hadn’t seen much of Ella and all the people they worked with. Sure, Ella, Dan and Charlotte would come over sometimes, but both of them missed being at the precinct, which had led them to make the decision of going over there for a while to a) drop Trixie off with her dad and b) introduce Clover to all their workmates. It was a little bit out of Chloe’s comfort zone, but Dan had a case and it would help him a lot if they dropped Trixie off there instead of having him go pick her up from school. 

“Are you excited we’re picking up big sis from school today?” Clover smiled at her mother as she changed her diaper, getting her ready to leave. They had learnt the hard way that diaper changes could come at the most inconvenient times. “I bet you are, you love the car,” Clover smiled again, loving the diaper talk and softly kicking her legs, making Chloe’s job that much more difficult. “I guess some things from your days in my belly have stuck with you, haven’t they?” She said it as a reference of how much she used to kick her back when she was pregnant. She kind of missed the little taps, and oftentimes not so little. 

The little nine-pound girl was meeting the developmental milestones of a two-month-old just the same way a normal, completely human baby would. She would smile when her parents or sister talked to her, she would kick her legs sometimes, hold her head up both when in the arms of an adult and during tummy time, amongst other things. In fact, for having been a week preterm, she was really advanced, maybe thanks to the celestial blood running through her veins.

So far, she seemed to be an ordinary two-month-old, and if it weren’t because they knew Lucifer was an angel, because Chloe’s invulnerability had stuck after the delivery, and because Clover was literally impenetrable with anything sharp, they would have completely forgotten that she was the first half-human half-angel baby to ever exist. They also had those brief moments where Lucifer and her would share an otherworldly golden shine, mostly when they both were happy and extremely relaxed, and it was something that never ceased to amaze Chloe. 

Lucifer was watching from the doorway, having offered to change the diaper himself but being tasked with waiting, as Chloe had it covered. He wondered what she meant with that reference, given that his knowledge of human gestation had been extended only to the point of knowing how to deliver a child, but not actually knowing what happened during the nine months prior. 

“Now, Clovie darling, can we leave? We’ve been trying to leave the house for half an hour already,” Clover smiled again, accidentally touching her cheek with her own fist and looking for something to suckle on as a reflex. Chloe hoped that the gesture meant that yes, they could in fact leave. She was barely two months old and already commanding their lives. They would be going back to work only half time, since Chloe was still breastfeeding, and they honestly didn’t know what they would do when little Clover wasn’t around. She was such a happy little baby. 

“Is she going to let us leave?” Asked the devil, making his presence known. 

“I hope so. I really didn’t want to change a diaper in the car again,” Chloe closed Clover’s onesie and picked her up from the changing table, walking towards the door. “Ready? Let’s leave before anything else falls apart,”

Lucifer agreed with an effusive nod and followed Chloe on her way to the car. She put Clover in her car seat, which had already been filled with bright toys as the baby liked sounds and bright colors, and made her way towards the driver’s seat, glad that Clover was in a good mood. She loved the car so much that when her colic hit her too badly, which wasn’t all the time, the only way to calm her down would be going on a drive until she fell asleep. 

Chloe drove to Trixie’s school and picked the nine-year-old up, the girl excited by the prospect of being picked up by her whole family instead of just her mom or dad. She climbed on the backseat of the same car that had seen her sister be born, and spent the whole ride to the precinct playing with her, making her smile and kick her legs happily. Trixie was entranced by her little sister, she loved her so much and could be so helpful when doing chores around the house. Besides, Clover was a huge fan of all the funny faces Trixie could pull.

When parking the car at Chloe’s designated parking spot, the new parents took a deep breath in, having missed being around the precinct during Chloe’s maternity leave. They were excited everyone would get a chance to meet Clover, but they were also kind of nervous of what the last day off meant. They would have to work out a new schedule, leave Clover with someone else, go back in the field now having one more reason to make sure they got back home. As excited as they were, the nerves were also there, pulsing through their veins alongside the thrill of everything new. 

Chloe opened the door for Trixie and Lucifer took Clover out of her car seat, also grabbing the diaper bag beside it as he now knew it was impossible to get out of the house with a baby without one of those. With his daughter in his right arm and a pink, diaper bag hung over his left shoulder, he, Chloe and Trixie made their way into the station.

“Oh, burnt coffee and body odor never smelled so good,” he exclaimed, taking in a deep breath as the trio walked down the stairs into the bullpen, catching the eyes of some coworkers. Chloe rolled her eyes at Lucifer’s remark, but however, she smiled. She had missed being at work, too. 

“Daddy!” The nine-year-old exclaimed when her father made it into her field of sight, running towards him at the first chance she got. Daniel was quick to kneel down and hug his daughter tightly, picking her up and everything. She had been at Chloe’s for a week since Dan had been so busy with a serial killer case. It was evident that the little girl had missed her dad, and vice versa. 

“Oh, Monkey, hi!” Dan greeted her, letting his eyes fall on the new set of parents and the two-month-old the Devil was holding. 

“Sorry about that, she was too excited to see you,” apologized Chloe once her and Lucifer made it into Daniel’s field of hearing. 

“It’s okay. I missed my princess, too,” Dan hugged Trixie tightly one more time before lowering her down to the floor and letting her go; the little girl holding on to her father’s hand. “Oh my god, Clover’s gotten so big! What do you feed this girl?” Daniel cooed at his friend’s daughter, smiling widely when the baby smiled back at him. Daniel was a known face in the household, and Clover seemed to be pretty fond of him. 

“Nothing but her mother’s milk,” just a look on Chloe’s side was enough for Lucifer to drop that train of thought almost immediately. It was nice to know that somethings would never change. 

“She’s growing up too fast.” Chloe complained, looking at her baby girl with love in her eyes. She stared back at Dan with her big, round, brown eyes, pulling smiles here and there. She was a social butterfly, just like her father. She wouldn’t care about who was holding her. “I already miss the newborn stage.”

“Personally, I believe she’s much more fun at this age. Newborns don’t do much,” Lucifer commented, bouncing her slightly to contribute to her happiness.

“Yeah, man, but they’re so precious at that age. I still miss Trixie’s newborn days and she’s almost ten years old,” Dan added, to which Trixie tugged on his hand.

“Hey, that’s not fun! I don’t remember any of it!” the little girl complained, wanting to be included in the conversation.

“Don’t you worry, spawn. I prefer you much more at the age you’re at now. You’re far more independent,” Trixie smiled content at Lucifer’s remark, liking to be included.

“You say that now. I’ll ask you again in a couple of years,” Dan joked, smiling widely as it was nice to finally have the devilish duo back at work. Well… at least almost back at work. It was nice, too, that Lucifer was a dad now. It made his and Daniel’s relationship evolve to a higher level since now there were more things they could relate to, now that they were both girl dads. 

“All I know is that this little thing will always be the light of my eyes,” the devil said, looking down at Clover and pulling soft faces at her under Chloe’s soft glance. 

“Man, you have no idea how much more likable you are now that you’ve got a kid,” Trixie laughed at Daniel’s commentary, knowing for a fact that her daddy and Lucifer didn’t use to get along that well at the very beginning. She loved that they were best friends now. 

“Watching him be so… different, it’s truly amazing. Truth to be told, I didn’t think he had it in him,” Chloe commented, looking at Clover and smiling because why not? She was happy. 

“Hey!” the devil complained. “I just… All I know is that this little urchin here bewitched me. She literally made me change my mind in less than five minutes,”

“No, hey! I’m glad she did. You look happier,” Dan smiled, catching Clover’s attention with his funny faces.

“Well, I am, for a fact.” 

“Oh my God, is that who I think it is?” They heard Ella before they saw her; the excitement within her being conveyed to perfection with her words. Ella just loved babies so much.

Chloe had missed her so much during the last month, that she was the one to walk up to her nerdy, scientist friend and hug her, taking the latter by surprise. Ella returned the hug immediately, keeping it short but sweet and loving the fact that her hugs were sort of rubbing off on people. She hadn’t seen neither Lucifer nor Chloe for a month given that the homicide department had been dealing with a crazy case of a serial killer that managed to take the lives of five victims before he was caught. If Ella had little to no free time when working normal cases, it was only logical that a serial killer would take up even more of her time. 

“Holy… She’s gotten so big!” She exclaimed when Clover made it into her field of sight, walking up to Lucifer and snatching the baby away from his arms without asking. It was common knowledge to everyone in their circle that they didn’t need to ask to hold the littlest urchin. “How can a human grow so much in a month? And oh my God, how did you get even cuter? Auntie Ella missed you so much,” and then she proceeded to smother Clover’s face with kisses and blowing raspberries, things that the two-month-old enjoyed. She loved having everyone’s attention on her, much like her daddy.

“I’ll never get tired of saying it. She’s like a mini Chloe with Lucifer’s eyes and personality,” Dan said, smiling widely and happy that his friends had found the stability they so needed.

“Yeah, she kind of is. At least one of my babies looks like me.” She said, knowing that Trixie was almost identical to her paternal grandmother, a Mexican woman Chloe had only seen pictures of, since she had passed away long before Dan and Chloe got married. Trixie was a living copy of her, and it made her feel happy for Dan. 

“Daddy? Can we go for an ice cream later?” Trixie asked, breaking the conversation. 

“Sure, Monkey. Can you wait half an hour? I need to finish up some paperwork,” Dan answered and Trixie nodded, remaining still on her spot. “You can help me put the tags on them,”

“Come on here, Trix. Give mommy a kiss,” Chloe kneeled down and hugged her daughter, saying goodbye to her as she was supposed to be spending the entire weekend at her father’s house. The little girl complied and hugged her mom, and quickly enough gave Lucifer a sign, asking him to bring Clover down to her height to also say goodbye to her. 

“I love you, sissy. Don’t grow up while I’m gone, okay?” She kissed both of Clover’s cheeks while the two-month-old just chilled in her father’s arms. She was far too comforgtable to care. Trixie then made a beeline towards Lucifer, once her sister was out of her way, and hugged him tightly by the waist. The devil still found himself not knowing how to feel when Trixie did that, but at least the flinches were getting more and more scarce the more she did it. “Goodbye, Lucifer!”

“Come on, Monkey,” Dan called her, offering her a hand that she gladly took. “See you tomorrow, guys. I’m glad you’ll both be back to work.”

“You too, Dan. Call me if anything, alright?” Dan nodded at Chloe’s words and also went towards his desk, leaving the forensic scientist with Clover and the new parents.

“You know, I feel like you’re my spiritual animal. You’re always happy!” Ella talked to Clover, relishing in her wide smile and occasional sound. “Who’s the happiest baby alive?”

“If I were you, I’d stop moving her around so much, Miss Lopez. You never know when she can barf all over you. That child is like a barfing time bomb,” Lucifer recommended, having been in the position of playing with his daughter when all of a sudden she barfed all over him. It was the furthest thing from pleasant, to say the least.

“She’s due to eat though. Ella should be safe,” Chloe commented, finding herself comfortable when standing close to the devil himself. Having a child together had blurred out almost all of the boundary lines, and, except for sex and anything romantic, they were doing almost everything together. 

“Huh, guys… Lucifer’s hunch was on point,” Ella said, holding Clover away from her torso as she realized something. “Only that he got wrong which end of the GI tract was the one to go off.”

“She always has such perfect timing. Reminds me of someone,” Chloe commented, smiling widely when Ella handed Clover back to Lucifer with a grimace of disgust. Forensic scientist or not, human feces always managed to gross her out no matter the age. 

“It’s my turn,” The devil grabbed his daughter with one arm, feeling pretty confident. That was neither the first nor the last poop diaper he would be changing in the next year. “Oh my… For dad’s sake, what do you have in there?” the devil exclaimed when he heard his daughter fart on him. One could say the little thing knew how to be loud. Chloe laughed lightly at the situation, as did Ella. 

They took advantage of the proximity of Chloe’s desk, and walked over there after Ella excused herself, saying something in the order of ‘See you tomorrow guys,’ mixed with ‘Some of us don’t do well with human feces’ and ‘Not everyone is on leave’. Apparently, the forensic scientist could deal with stomach contents from deceased victims but couldn’t fathom baby poop. Both Lucifer and Chloe knew Ella wasn’t all too sure in the wanting-a-baby department, so, to each their own.

Chloe took a portable changing mat out of the diaper bag and laid it out on top of her empty desk. They would’ve gone to the bathroom had they been a little more accommodating for parents with infants, but since they consisted of three stalls and two sinks with no countertop, they had to make do with what they had. They had sort of become experts on changing diapers on any surface they might come across over those last two months.

Lucifer laid his daughter on her back, on top of the changing mat, only to find out that what they thought had been an ordinary bowel movement had become a poop explosion.

“Oh. My. God. That is a good one,” Chloe commented mid-laugh before her eyes settled on Lucifer’s three-piece suit, more particularly, on his vest. 

“You seriously had to go to the bathroom all over me?” The warmth and wetness all over his torso told him what had happened way before his eyes got the time to look. “What even am I to you?” Clover said nothing, but looked up at her father with a beautiful shine in her chocolate eyes that made the devil feel weak in the knees. He loved his daughter so much it would nauseate his past self, and he honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the little thing turned up to be able to draw out people’s desires and be as enticing as him.

Between diaper changes and craziness, Chloe found herself thinking. And, while thinking is always seen as a good thing, she wasn’t all too sure of her feelings about said thoughts.

She would be lying if she said it was the first time since Clover was born that she had found herself thinking things she shouldn’t, but having seen firsthand just how wonderful Lucifer was to their daughter and how much he genuinely cared about her was making Chloe think about seeing him under a different light. There had been romance once, and she wouldn’t even try to lie and say that what she had with him, although as rough and patchy as it was, had been one of the best, most rewarding journeys she had embarked herself on. It had given her a second daughter that she couldn’t imagine her life without, but it also had given her so much more.

She now knew for a fact that everything humanity ever thought of the devil, or of evil on itself, was as wrong as something could possibly get. Mankind would just have to see the devil dealing with a leaky diaper to know that something had to be seriously wrong with history. They would have to see him fall asleep on a rocking chair with a baby on his chest, they would have to hear him sing to her in a tongue belonging only to Heaven, songs of something Chloe had no idea of but sounded so beautiful it was painful. Seeing him be that way with a child he thought he didn’t want up until the very last minute would make anyone change their perception about evil, and Chloe couldn’t possibly be more glad that, out of everyone in the world, she had been the one that got to experience it firsthand. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have you liked it! Please, tell me what you think!
> 
> P.S. Next chapter’s title is *drumrolls*: “Separation anxiety”!
> 
> Take care!


	9. Separation anxiety

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello you beautiful people! I’ve missed you sooooo much!
> 
> I’m neck deep into finals and I will be until December 29th, so chapter 10 will be coming on the 18th as I said before, and chapter 11 will be up January 1st, 2021. I’m soooooo sorry and I really hope that next year *wink wink* I manage to get around to updating weekly as I used to. 
> 
> I kinda have January free (class wise) but I have to study for all the exams that I’ll have to take on February, so... It’s kinda the same shit all over again. I’m soooo sorry that I couldn’t keep it up once a week, and I really hope that this New Year lets me go back to having DMC Fridays!
> 
> Also, have you seen the stats?? We’re almost at 5k hits and 200+ kudos and that’s amazing! I can’t thank you enough for the support you’ve shown me! I love you all so damn much! 
> 
> Without other than a big “thank you” to say, I’ll leave you to chapter nine, aka “Separation Anxiety”. Hope you’ll like it!
> 
> All my love, Rena.

Waking up the next day and going through a new morning routine had been dreaded, but very welcomed at the very same time. 

Both of the adults were a) very glad that Trixie had spent the night at Daniel’s and b) thrilled that they got to go back to work that very same morning. However, and as everything in life, good things came with a hell of a lot of bad. 

Chloe would be lying if she said she hadn’t noticed the way Lucifer had gone to bed the night before, completely shattering his self-imposed rule of no co-sleeping. He had gotten Clover ready for bed, and instead of laying her on her crib right beside Chloe’s bed, he had gone to bed with her laying on his chest. Now that he actually had a bed, since Maze had moved out, he had been tempted to co-sleep far more often, and seeing as it only brought chaos in Clover’s sleep schedule, he had decided he’d keep that pleasure from himself. 

It was wired in a way he was still failing to understand, but something within him felt at ease whenever Clover was near him. Having her nearby assured him his daughter was safe. It pained him putting her to bed in Chloe’s room and then having to exile himself to Maze’s old room, even if he had a baby monitor and everything. He just needed to be sure she was safe, and having her within reaching distance did that for him. He was positive that, as long as Clover was with him, nothing bad would happen to the happy little baby, and even if he was only two rooms away from her at night, it still hurt.

That morning they silently agreed that Lucifer would be the one to get Clover up and ready. Chloe could notice how much being away from her messed with him and she wanted to let him spend as much time with her as possible before leaving her with Maze until noon. That was certainly something that worried the devil to an unfathomable extent.

They had had to make a choice between leaving Clover at daycare for four hours a day, or to leave her with Maze. Leaving her at daycare would mean she was with professional people that knew how to handle babies, but it also meant leaving her with people that knew nothing about divinity and about Clover being half-angel, which was dangerous to an extent they weren’t willing to go. Leaving her with Maze, on the other hand, meant that she would know how to deal with any celestial outburst the little girl might experience. However, Maze barely knew how to take care of Trixie, and, even if she meant well, she was far too out of her element taking care of a two-month-old. 

As tough as it was, they had to choose with humanity’s best interest at heart, and had to leave her with Maze. Lucifer was most definitely not freaking out about that, no. 

Lucifer had to tell himself that everything would be fine throughout the entirety of the forty-five minutes it took him to get Clover ready for the day. It normally took him less than half an hour, but he just had to take his time and make sure that nothing preventable would be the cause for disaster. At least they wouldn’t have to take Clover out of the house, as Maze would be stopping by and staying there until midday, when they got to come back. 

Through deep breaths and asking at least three times if Maze truly knew what to do in all the crazy scenarios that had gone through his head, he and Chloe went on their way to precinct; the detective driving through LA’s traffic and the devil sitting by her side, practically going insane. He had never once in his very long life thought that he would care so much about another being. And he thought he cared too much about Chloe...

They made it to the precinct about half an hour after leaving, and all Lucifer could think about was Clover and her well-being. It was all there was in his mind; whether she’d take the bottle as she wasn’t too used to it, whether or not Maze would be able to handle her colic, whether or not she would have a celestial outburst that would destroy the world without him being there to hold her through it. It hadn’t happened before and there really wasn’t a reason to be afraid of Clover bringing the apocalypse to earth, but it didn’t hurt to juggle something of the sort as a possibility. He just felt so much for his daughter that the only way it could come out was as an inhumane need to be there for her, and he was inhumane enough as it was. 

“You sure you’re okay, right?” Chloe asked him for the umpteenth time as they walked inside the precinct, headed towards her desk. Co-parenting inside the same house had brought them closer in a fraternal way, and they would very often worry about each other’s well-being. While Chloe was reconsidering relighting the spark that had once led to Clover’s existence, she couldn’t be too sure things were the same on Lucifer’s end. However, that didn’t keep her from worrying about him and making sure he was alright. 

“Of course,” he answered, but both him and Chloe knew neither of them believed it. He was so tense his body was showing it, and Lord knew the devil was usually good at concealing his emotions. 

“You know you can talk to me, don’t you?” Chloe insisted, wanting him to open up to her the way he sometimes would before it all went downhill. She wouldn’t trade Clover for anything, but she sometimes missed the way their relationship was before Chloe found out, before they slept together that one amazing, perfect time.

“I do, Detective,” Lucifer tried to reassure her, knowing all too well Chloe knew him like the palm of her hand. “Besides, LA has the best crime-solving duo back in business. What’s not to be happy about that? Let’s go give the bad guys some justice,” Chloe smiled sheepishly as she heard Lucifer’s remark, not fully believing him.

They made it to the detective’s desk and settled comfortably, getting a few glances and warm smiles since, apparently, everyone had missed them. And by them, it meant Lucifer in particular, because even after years of working together, many people would shamelessly ogle the tall, dark, handsome, British man and satisfy their human need of staring at something beautiful. Chloe couldn’t blame them. She’d had a piece of all that just short of a year before, and she knew she would never meet anyone who would top him, or even come close to everything he’d made her feel. He was sex on legs, and while she understood the need to just blatantly stare at him, it did make her jealous to a certain extent.

“I’m so glad you guys are back,” Dan greeted them, coming to the desk and dropping off two paper cups with coffee, one dark and filled two thirds of the way for the devil -as he would usually top it off with a liquor of his choice-, and a decaffeinated one with almond milk and sweetener for the detective. 

“Glad to be back, Dan. Thank you,” the detective responded, thanking her ex-husband for the coffee and taking in its smell. She couldn’t wait to stop breastfeeding to be able to go back to drinking normal coffee.

“How’s the little antichrist?” Dan asked happily, referring to Clover as ‘Little antichrist’ ever since the moment she was born. It was out of pure mockery. That baby didn’t have a mean bone in her body, she was just happiness personified, with a head too big for her body. He assessed the situation, immediately noticing Lucifer’s odd behavior and dropping the smile on his face. He was far more tense than usual. “Woah. Someone started his day with the wrong foot,” he commented, trying to keep the mood up.

“I know, right? I knew I wasn’t seeing things,” she knew more than that, but she wouldn’t breach into Lucifer’s privacy at work.

“I’m fine, I’m fine… I’m just…” he tried to deflect it, but he was so tense it was really hard to let his state go by unnoticed. “Clover’s with Maze. That about covers it.”

“Yeah, that explains a lot,” Dan agreed, having grown fonder of the demon during the months of Chloe’s absence. She had become far more tolerable since she got herself a position as a bounty hunter for the LAPD. 

“Lucifer, we’ve talked about this. We’ve left Maze semi-alone with Clover for two hours and everything was okay. There’s no need to worry. Maze can handle her,” Chloe tried to reassure him once again, much like she had done during the entirety of the previous week, but it was to no avail.

“I’m not worried about Maze. I’m worried about Clover,” Chloe smiled softly, not believing her eyes when seeing Lucifer so worried about their daughter. She truly thought that would never happen. 

“I know you are, but they’ll be just fine. Besides, Clovie loves her,” It pained her seeing Lucifer so worried, but it also made her heart feel warm. 

“It’s not that difficult to please Clover. You just have to make funny faces to her and she’ll love you. No wonder she loves Daniel,” Dan laughed at the joke, and Chloe smiled tightly once again, reading the underlying issue beneath his humor. 

“I get it man. You miss her, but you’ll get used to it. Besides, when you move out of Chloe’s you’ll have to learn to be without her for a couple of days at a time. Think of this as practice for when that day comes,” that thought had never gone through his mind. Not even once.

There would be a time where Clover wouldn’t be around him for days at a time. Days. How would he cope with that? How would he manage to live his life without his daughter by his side?

Chloe was able to see the color drain out of the devil’s face when Daniel’s statement came out of his mouth, and while she concealed it pretty well, a faint expression of tension and annoyance made it to her face. That was something they still had to talk about; the inevitable moment where Lucifer would have to go back to living on his own and they would have to make arrangements for Clover to spend time with them on their own, and together. She was dreading that conversation. She was dreading the time where Lucifer would just move out and stop being part of her day to day life. 

“So, because your workload was halved, you’re just gonna assist on cases, so… Wanna hear what I’ve got?” Daniel said, failing to notice the way Lucifer had paled and all of Chloe’s features had tightened. 

“Sure,” Chloe tried, but her blue eyes were all too focused on the all too fidgety devil standing on her right, not knowing what to do with his own body. 

Daniel’s words had gotten to him, and all the times Dan had to spend time away from Trixie made it to his mind. What if Chloe ever took his daughter away to another continent for half a year? He wouldn’t be able to live with the fact that his daughter could very well be overseas, he would need to be there. But he also couldn’t keep on living with Chloe indefinitely as they weren’t in a relationship and he would have to move out eventually.

Fuck. Thank you, Daniel.

He didn’t realize just how much the frequency of his breathing seemed to increase, or the way that cold sweat started running down his spine. He was completely unaware of the way that his body started showing the signs of his stress. Clover wouldn’t be within reaching distance for the rest of eternity. His present day was just that, the present. Things would change as time went by and she became more independent. She would eventually leave them, and while she didn’t, there would be either Lucifer or Chloe to meet her needs, not the both of them at the same time as things were as of then. Because they weren’t together… Because, in a way, they weren’t a family.

If his eyes still had the ability to turn red, they would have been burning brightly. Not out of spite or anger, but of fear. Of terror, of all the ugly things that the prospect of something bad ever happening to Clover made him feel.

“So, the victim is a forty-two-year-old John Doe, found… Hey man, everything okay?” Dan stopped himself on his tracks after finally noticing the state Lucifer was in. They had been at work for less than ten minutes but the thought of missing a precious moment with his baby girl had hit a nerve he didn’t even know he had. All there was running through his system was fear. He was afraid of time.

“Uh, Dan… I think… Lucifer, is everything alright?” The devil failed to answer, formulating a blob of gibberish in his mind that didn’t make it past his mouth. “No, things are definitely not alright. I’ll catch up on the details later. Lucifer, come with me,” Lucifer didn’t respond to her command, but she already saw that coming. She grabbed him by the wrist and, with an apologetic smile towards her once husband, dragged Lucifer away to an evidence room; the devil following after her like a lost puppy with far too much trouble coating his dark, usually warm eyes. “What is it?” she asked after closing the door to the evidence room behind her back. Lucifer was on the verge of breaking down.

“I… I,” he stuttered, not knowing how to put into words the torment he felt inside his heart. 

“I noticed you were off all this past week. What’s gotten into you?” She would never think it had something to do with him not wanting to be in Clover’s life anymore. The guy was head over heels in love with their daughter and she knew he would do anything for her. However, while she wasn’t afraid, the thought did cross her mind.

“Clover’s with Maze,” and with that, Chloe sort of got a glimpse into what was making the devil so fidgety.

“Yeah. She came home today and agreed to stay with her for the four hours we have to work,” she spoke, addressing him like she would address Trixie when she did something wrong.

“That’s it. Maze’s with her. Not us, not… Not me,” in spite of the devil’s more than obvious desperation, Chloe smiled. She truly never thought she’d see the day where Lucifer would care about anyone more than he did himself. What a pity she never saw the way Lucifer used to care about her before they had Clover.

“Look, Lucifer, it’s normal to miss your kid when you go back to work. I totally get it, I’ve been there. I am there,” she said, putting an emphasis on the ‘am’. “Don’t you think I miss Clover? God, I just wish I could bring her here and work with her,” She wanted to reach out and touch him, offer him some sort of physical comfort, but that would be crossing a line neither of them felt comfortable crossing. They didn’t want to dredge up any remnants of the feelings they had once felt.

“Can’t we?” he asked hopefully, and the smile Chloe gave her was sort of pitiful, but it held a pride visible through her transparent eyes.

“We can’t. Imagine how chaotic that would be,” they cracked an awkward laugh, and Chloe was just hoping she was able to relieve some of Lucifer’s worries.

“I just… I guess Daniel’s just made me realize how fast this stage is going by, I mean… It seems like it was yesterday that you had her in the back of your car, not two months ago. I… How… How can you not be afraid of missing things when this goes by so quickly?” he asked, concern shining brightly through his chocolate pools.

“It’s easy. You can’t,” and she wanted to help him, she really did. But she also wanted to tell him the truth. “You’ll always worry about missing her milestones, it comes with being a parent. I get that there’s life outside of parenting but it can be so difficult… I still can’t forgive myself for missing Trixie’s first word, for example.” At that, Lucifer’s eyes widened.

“How do you do it? How did you go back to work when the spawn was born and…?” he gave a sigh of restlessness. “And not feel like you can’t function?” She smiled at him, fighting the urge to give him a reassuring pat on the arm. “I only feel okay when I have my eyes on her, I… That’s the only way I have to know she’s safe.”

“I understand, Lucifer, but you just can’t give up on your life. Part of being a responsible adult is learning how to juggle these kinds of things, and just trust your kid’s gonna be fine. Besides, she’s with Maze, so I wouldn’t worry too much about her safety,”

“It’s… It’s not just about not being with her, I… I don’t want to miss stuff,” he sighed yet again, growing more restless by the minute. “There will come a time when I… Well, when we won’t be living together anymore, and that will mean that I won’t see her every day, and I…” as facts and uncertainties wormed their way into his mind, his palms grew sweatier, his heart beat faster. All of a sudden, he was becoming all too human. How inconvenient. “We don’t even know if she’s immortal yet. How am I going to keep on living after she dies, huh? How will I ever forgive myself if I miss something in her life? Because, you know, a normal human lifespan is the blink of an eye for a celestial being, and there’s no way I’m going to let my daughter into Hell after she dies, but that means I’ll never see her again because–” and just as he was going to keep on rambling, Chloe gave in to her urge to touch him and he shut up, being distracted by the sudden feeling of warmth on his right arm.

“Lucifer. Breathe,” she ordered, smiling softly as she somewhat understood what all those things meant to him.

“I don’t want to lose her,” he said with a sorrow so great in his eyes that Chloe just had to keep giving in. She had to.

She pulled him in for a hug. A kind of physical contact they hadn’t had since that one time when Lucifer told her he reckoned her father would be proud of her, way before they slept together and got themselves into their new life. It was weird, but oddly comforting, nerve-wracking and also soothing. It was nice knowing they could count on each other through a means other than speaking. Words could mean a lot of things, but a hug? A hug could always give away so much more, reassure every single doubt.

“Silly, you’re not gonna lose her,” she softened her voice just a little, letting him rest his head on her warm chest as she rested her head on top of his, trying to calm him down. “Try not to get ahead of time because, in doing so, you risk missing even more stuff than what you’re already set to miss,” she didn’t know if Lucifer liked it, but she brought her fingers up to his scalp and let them wonder through his thick hair, a gesture just on the verge of too intimate. He sighed, too overwhelmed to even notice the way a non-spoken boundary was being thoroughly broken.

“I can’t help it, I… I never cared about someone this much before. I don’t know how to function and I hate it,” he complained, feeling oddly comfortable in Chloe’s embrace, even if the detective was almost a head shorter than him and he had to bend over in an awkward way to hug her like that. “I never even thought of myself as… I never thought I would be able to care this much for… For a child,” he cracked a laugh at that, knowing just how much he despised the little creatures. “All I know is that I would do anything for her. In a heartbeat.”

“I know,” she smiled, unbeknownst to the devil. “That’s why you’re such a good father. You worry so much about her that you really shouldn’t worry about anything. As long as she’s got you in her life, she’s gonna be alright.”

“That, although very flattering and helpful, does not help with the longing. It literally aches,” he complained, finally finding the courage within himself to pull away from the hug and face the detective, trying to sort of laugh the whole situation off.

“And here I was, thinking I was the hormonal one,” Chloe laughed at him lightheartedly, teasing him and slowly bringing themselves back into their usual dynamic where feelings weren’t a topic for discussion. “But seriously, are you okay?” she just wanted to make sure. For the sake of their co-parenting.

“I don’t know, I mean… Will I ever be?” he wiped a treacherous little tear that managed to escape his right eye, hoping that Chloe would let that one pass. She respectfully did. “I want to be positive that my daughter is happy, healthy and safe, and I… I just can’t do that while I’m here.” At that comment, Chloe tilted her head, kind of understanding what Lucifer’s point was.

“So… What are you saying? What are you going to do?” she questioned, and he let out a massive sigh, contemplating his options.

“I love working here, with you, but I… I care more about Clover and her safety than anything else,” he started, heading towards a conclusion that Chloe already knew all too well. “All her material needs will always be satisfied, and I… I just don’t feel ready to leave her under someone else’s care. Someone who doesn’t know all her little quirks and the way she truly likes things.” Chloe smiled, realizing just how much she liked the way that fatherhood had changed Lucifer. He was still his same old self, but having new responsibilities and priorities made him grow more into his own person, and she would never say it out loud, but she liked him more with every day that passed.

Alas, it wasn’t like a chance at a happy ending, romantically speaking, was on the table.

“I’m going to stay with her while you work, if that’s fine with you,” he decided, and Chloe just looked at him with a bright and wide smile plastered on her face. “I can’t afford to miss anything from her life, I just can’t,”

“Okay. We can totally do that,” she agreed, feeling immensely proud of him, of how far he had come. “Besides, since I’m working part time because I’m still breastfeeding, I’m not gonna be taking any cases of my own. You would have been stuck here for four hours doing paperwork on everyone else’s cases.” Lucifer rolled his eyes and scoffed, already falling back into his old, confident self. They would be just fine.

“Good then. This decision couldn’t have come at a better time,” he sighed, trying to camouflage the relief he felt at knowing that in less than an hour he would be back home, holding his baby girl. “Also, I don’t fully trust Maze’s abilities for infant care,”

“Yeah, what were we thinking?” Chloe smiled, and in turn, Lucifer smiled too.

“It was in humanity’s best interest, darling. All…” he looked at his watch to check what time it was. “Forty-seven minutes of it,” Chloe laughed lightly, liking that he was back to his old self.

“Come on now, chop chop. I think that by now Clover is the one taking care of Maze, not the other way around,” Lucifer laughed and opened the door to the evidence closet, being a gentleman and letting Chloe come out of it first. No pun intended. “Make sure our daughter’s still alive and the house is still standing by the time I get home, alright?”

“It’s a definite yes to the first one, and a maybe for the latter,” Chloe gave him a half-hearted death stare, one of those she would give him early on in their partnership, and the devil just smiled. “Go indulge yourself in some paperwork, will you?” And with that, they each went their separate ways, Chloe to work and Lucifer to their place to take care of their daughter. Truth was, doing so was what felt right for both of them.

Chloe approached her desk with a warm smile plastered on her face, happy that, for once, things were coming up just the way she wanted them to. Well, at least something that resembled the outcome she actually wanted. Not that she would ever admit it out loud.

How could she have ever believed the man she knew actually was what history and religion made him out to be? How was it possible that just a couple of months before she was terrified of him? Of the idea of ever coming back to LA? He was a man that happened to carry the blame for all of humanity’s wrongdoings on his shoulders, he was a man that had been through things Chloe would never understand, and yet, there he was, showing his true colors and relishing in all of his glory. He had left work, something he loved, to take care of their daughter because he couldn’t deal with the prospect of leaving her under someone else’s care. How could the beast from the bible and the man she knew ever be the same person?

With that in mind, with everything she knew about Lucifer making her feel comfortable and at ease, she opened one of the drawers on her desk, pulling out a leather-bound copy of the bible. She opened it where once upon a time, a lost version of herself had opened that very same book and folded over the corner to a page in John’s book.

_ “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. _ _ ” _

There, right on top of John 8:44, lay the four-leaf clover that had given her youngest daughter her name. She had been so scared when she found out the truth, when she plucked that clover right from underneath a willow tree, so confused she didn’t know what to do with her thoughts. She had been listening to the wrong people, she had muted her heart out. And she had been wrong, terribly so.

Back then, she had been convinced that everything that came out of the devil’s mouth was a lie. Now she was sure she could have never been more wrong, for he had risked his own life to save hers, for he had given up the pleasure he saw in living life as he had to take on the responsibilities of a father, for he had given her hope. If the devil, of all people, could be understood and loved by people who knew of his true nature, if the people around them had listened to his side of the story and believed him, then there was hope. There was hope of maybe, one day, telling him everything that fear had almost brought her to do. For now, however, placing the clover inside her planner and moving on with her day was all that could be done about their present.

Having spent the entirety of Clover’s life under the same roof had brought changes to their relationship, changes they were still adjusting themselves to. Chloe was still learning that most of the stuff humanity said about her daughter’s father was wrong, Lucifer was beginning to trust again after feeling like he could rely on no one. While it was nice to have the support of each other throughout something of the sort, it was also nice to each have their own space. Chloe trusted Lucifer and Lucifer was well on his way to trusting Chloe again.

However, living under the same roof and doing nothing but take care of an infant had brought a lack of perspective into their lives, and Chloe couldn’t honestly be more thankful that, for now, work was her space. Lucifer’s inner helicopter parent would be happy to know that Clover was safe at all times because he was there, and Chloe would get some time to herself where she wouldn’t have to be changing diapers or having a baby sucking on her boob for two hours straight. Besides, Chloe was far calmer now that she knew Clover would be with her father, someone who actually knew how to take care of her.

They deserved stability, and now that they had calmed their fears and worries, all they had left to do was allow time to run its course and see where it took them. Hopefully, their future would become as much as a happy ending as possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... next chapter’s title is... *drumrolls please*: “Like talking to a wall”. 
> 
> I hope you liked what you just read and please, leave kudos and comments! They make me the happiest!
> 
> Remember I’m on Instagram @crime_solvingdevil where I post shitty stuff about anything and everything! Go follow me there!
> 
> Take care and we’ll see each other again on the 18th. 
> 
> Lots of love!


	10. Like talking to a wall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Hi! I’m posting a little late but I just wanted to make sure the chapter was on point for all of you to enjoy! Sorry about the delay!
> 
> There are some good and bad news. The good news (for you at least. They’re devastating for me) is that COVID cancelled my entire examination period and until February I can’t take those exams and move forward in uni *sarcastic yay*. The bad news is that, while I now have more free time than I used to, I’m struggling just a tiny little bit to write and I really want to be ahead of schedule with this fic at all times. I’ve just begun writing chapter 12 (which will be up on January 15th) and it’s stressing me out only being one chapter ahead of you. 
> 
> On a more positive note, this chapter is kinda fluffy so... I’m making justice to the tag that says “domestic fluff” on the description hahah. 
> 
> Without anything but a huge thank you to say, I’ll leave you to chapter 10!
> 
> All my love, Rena.

Chloe would never admit it out loud, but having had Lucifer leave the precinct before ten in the morning had made her day so much more bearable. She had left the house picturing just how much of a pain he would be, complaining about paperwork and not going on the field. That was how things ought to be for the first couple of months, though. Working only four hours a day on the premise that she was still breastfeeding and had a demanding little thing waiting for her at home (two, if you count Clover), meant that she wouldn’t be able to take on cases by herself, and therefore, she wouldn’t be going on the field unless it was extremely necessary. 

Also, having Lucifer be the one taking care of Clover and not Maze had eased her mind so much it was almost unbelievable. Maze didn’t have the best reputation handling small humans, and while she would know how to deal with any celestial outburst Clover might have, teaching her how to change a diaper had been an odyssey. She was just thankful to know she would get home and see her baby girl in one piece, and her house sort of not falling apart. 

She clumsily pulled her keys from her purse and made her way into her home, not announcing herself as, well, it was her house. Lucifer would be expecting her, technically. However, when she realized the magnitude of the quietness in her home, she felt suspicious.

She walked towards the living room, pulling off her blazer and hanging it on the hanger alongside her purse, remaining in black jeans and a black, long sleeved tee shirt. Her eyes warily took in the looks of her apartment, and to her surprise, everything was clean and where it should be. That was nice. Walking into the living room, however, was what helped her find the reason why her house was so neat and quiet. 

It was a picture she had seen before, an image that represented her day to day life with an uncanny resemblance. Yet, getting home and walking in on something like that, it made her heart feel warm. It was almost like invading their privacy, like she shouldn’t be there, and yet, she couldn’t bring herself to stop looking. 

The devil was laying horizontally across the couch, on his back, suit vest and jacket long forgotten as only a linen shirt was covering his strong and muscular torso. He was breathing evenly, as evidenced by the slow rising and lowering of their daughter, comfortably settled on his chest. It didn’t matter that she was two months old already, her favorite sleeping spot would always be her father’s warm chest. 

She was fast asleep as well, a conclusion Chloe was forced to draw when she realized just how calmly she was lying there, no squirming involved. She was on her belly, cradled into a little ball and with her father’s hands wrapped protectively around her body, practically engulfing her entirely. She was really tiny for a two-month-old, given she had been born prematurely, which meant that Lucifer’s two hands easily shielded her away from all the harm of the world while they slept.

Chloe couldn’t quite grasp the reason why she was so touched by that living image, it was something she had already seen on many, many occasions, and yet, it managed to stir something inside her. Maybe it was all the hormones, maybe the sleep deprivation, she truly couldn’t tell. She was just glad it was happening at a time where she could allow herself to just sit back and process everything inside her heart. 

The detective made her way towards the coffee table and blatantly sat on it, not caring about it like she would if it were Trixie, per se. She rested her elbows on her thighs and leaned over, relishing on the living picture before her and taking its beauty in. They looked so peaceful, so comfortable, so much that a faint glimmer of heavenly light was coming off of them, almost like during the first day of Clover’s life. Both of them were in their happy place and it showed, because it made her feel happy too.

Clover’s feet were bare and it was only then that she noticed just how tiny she was compared to other two-month-old babies, or her own father, even. She had her naked legs propped up underneath her belly, ankles crossed barely past her bum, and she looked really comfortable having the hands of her father cradling her for comfort, putting a certain weight on her that made her feel safe. For comparison’s sake, a foot of hers was narrower than two of Lucifer’s fingers pressed together. After all, she was barely over nine pounds heavy, she was tiny. 

Seeing them like that, all cozy and relaxed, made the thought that her baby girl was still vulnerable and that she depended on them cross her mind, making her smile. She, much like the devil, wasn’t ready to have their lucky charm grow up just yet.

Her eyes once again landed on the tall, dark angel sleeping on the couch. His frame was so tall his chin was touching his chest and his feet were propped on the opposite arm rest, and while it didn’t look comfortable, he surely was. Chloe knew just how difficult he was when it came to his precious sleep, and that sole fact made her smile. She knew him so much. 

His eyelashes were brushing the top of his cheeks in a delicate manner, making him look more like an angel than he already was. That, plus his pouty lips and his seemingly uncomfortable position added up to the cuteness of the picture, and Chloe once again found herself thinking. Why did she have to think so much? And even worse, once a thought crossed her mind, why was she not able to let it go?

If she really dug deep into the abstract thought that was making her see all the beauty in the devil and not his flaws, she could kind of understand what she felt. Or at least come to terms with the meaning of that feeling. Lucifer had been so unreachable that, at a point in her past, she wasn’t even interested in him because she couldn’t grasp the possibility that he could be interested in her, too. Aside from getting her to bed, that is. Time had washed over them, circumstances were now different, and their reality now was so much richer. It went further than just being interested in each other.

She wouldn’t lie, thinking of seeing him under a romantic light again had scared the crap out of her. The thought had come to her mind so effortlessly and spontaneously that she had no chance fighting it, and that was how she had found herself thinking about it again. It hadn’t been twenty-four hours since the thought had first crossed her mind; the day before, when they went to drop Trixie off at the precinct. Ever since then it was all she could think about, minus Lucifer’s freak out earlier in the morning. 

“You know, I…” seeing him asleep and quiet was so inviting. It made her want to come clean, even if he wouldn’t have any recollection of everything she would say. “Would it be so crazy if I… If I felt something for you?” She began with that, trying to sit comfortably with the fact that, while admitting her feelings to a sleeping Lucifer, she would also be admitting them to a wide-awake version of herself. “I just… I knew I felt something back when we… You know, when we were together, and now… God, this is so embarrassing.” She was relying on the rhythm of Lucifer’s breathing to know when to stop talking. She would have to stop eventually; it was far too new and in the air for her to say something. 

“I know everyone says this but you’ve changed so much since we had Clover. For the better, of course, and I know you also love it, even if you don’t say it.” She sighed, finding herself at a stumbling block with her words, not knowing how to phrase the chaos inside her head. “I just… I can’t stress enough how sorry I am… about how I reacted when I first found out. I… I robbed you of so much time during my pregnancy and… God, all these things that I wish I can tell you eventually. Guess I’m too much of a chicken to wake you up and do it now.” She paused briefly, looking at him with a hint of something in her eyes that she couldn’t understand just yet. 

“Yesterday… When we were at the precinct and Clover’s diaper leaked onto you, I… I realized just how much our daughter has changed you. In the past, you would’ve made a huge deal out of poop getting anywhere near you and yet… You just laughed it off and changed her as if it were nothing.” She hadn’t been able to believe her eyes, and now she was unable to believe her memory. “And… I know I was pretty mad when you came back with Candy after we slept together, and I don’t even know what you went through but… I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. I’m making zero sense.” She sighed, annoyed at herself for not being able to convey with words the abstract mess going on inside her head. 

“Look, what I want to say is that… You and I, us… Being together, now that we have Clover and all… It wouldn’t be so bad,” a small smile painted her lips as she imagined everything, all the things they would be able to do if they were more than just friends. “And I also know that it’ll take a while before I can man up enough to tell you all this while you’re actually awake and listening to me. I guess… What I’m trying to say is that… I like you, Lucifer. Lord of the dark or not. Father of the year or not.”

And then there it was. Out in the open, a feeling relishing in all of its glory, all there for Chloe to see, for her to understand. She liked him, she had feelings for him, and honestly, how could she not? He had been proving her wrong time after time, showing her that he could be this awesome, wonderful being, and all without trying. He was so oblivious to the way his actions made her feel it was maddening, in a way. 

“I think us… We would be… Incredible,” and with that she chose to end her confession, imagining all they would have been had she not taken the reveal of his true nature the way she did. After all, it would always be her fault, and she had no way of making it right, at least not in the near future. 

In that exact moment, when Chloe was trying to see if she felt comfortable with admitting to herself what she was feeling, was when Clover decided she was done with her nap. She started squirming under the strong and comforting hold of her father, kicking her legs and wanting attention, and Chloe couldn’t help herself. Clover’s squirming, Lucifer’s awakening and Chloe’s reaching out to grab her two-month-old happened almost simultaneously. 

“Someone’s missing his weeks of sleeping on the couch,” she said nonchalantly, pretty confident Lucifer was just waking up and hadn't heard anything from her confession. 

“What?” he asked dazedly once he understood why the weight of Clover’s little body wasn’t on his chest anymore. His eyes focused on the detective with the small newborn in her arms, and neither of them looked happy. “Uh, what time is it?” he druggily sat up on the couch; his eyes never once leaving his daughter as the little thing kept whimpering.

“Barely past noon,” Chloe answered, getting Clover comfortable in her arms. The little girl was due to eat, and that was probably the reason why she was so fussy. “Oh, I know baby. You missed mommy?” The minute she offered her breast Clover took it, eagerly eating and calming down immediately. “I missed you so much,” she talked to her, softly running her thumb on her cheek and watching her baby girl calm down. 

“How was work?” Lucifer asked the detective, trying to force himself out of the nap-induced haze. Sleeping with Clover on his chest was the best way of sleeping there was for the devil in question.

“Oh, just boring. I hate not having cases of my own,” Chloe commented, unconsciously rocking Clover back and forth. “Thank you for cleaning the house, by the way. We left it a mess before leaving,”

“No problem,” Chloe couldn’t help it but think he was adorable while barely awake. He would rub his eyes with his knuckles and yawn, and she would have to force herself to not smile so stupidly. “I’ll start on something for lunch in a minute,” Lucifer hadn’t slept well the night before and it showed. He had never been one to take naps, and he was clearly still tired, and yet he was offering to cook lunch for them, much like almost every day. Chloe still had a hard time believing she had once been afraid of that man. His heart was golden, and there weren’t enough words in the universe that would let her thank him for everything he’d done since their daughter was born.

“Actually, it’s okay. We can just order takeout,” she said, wanting to give him some space to do things for himself. Truth be told, ever since Clover was born, Lucifer lived and breathed for her, and Chloe was getting the sense that he was losing himself in the process. The only thing that had remained from his life before parenthood were his sessions with Linda, and Chloe couldn’t be more glad about that.

“So…” he mumbled after a few moments of silence. “I wanted to apologize for… Well, for breaking down on you earlier today. I must have forgotten going back to work can be hard on you as well,” just when Chloe thought the man before her couldn’t make her feel more endeared, he would say something of the sort and throw her assumptions out the window. “Besides, I have Linda to do all my breaking down on, so… It was totally not called for and I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Lucifer, it’s okay. Actually, I’d like it if you were more open with me about how you feel with all of this. Having a baby is a bigger change for you than it is for me,” Lucifer smiled up sheepishly at her, and Chloe could only hope her heart wouldn’t beat out of her chest.

“Why could you possibly want that?” he questioned, genuinely confused.

“Well, because we share a child. We literally share a life, and… It would be better for Clover if both of us knew how the other is dealing with the changes,” it wasn’t entirely necessary for them to share everything, but Chloe wanted to help him. She wanted to step on the role of being someone of trust, someone Lucifer could be completely honest with without fearing the outcome.

“I don’t want to burden you any more than I have to,” he looked down at his lap, breaking eye contact.

“Lucifer, you’re not burdening me. And I can only hope that sharing how I feel isn’t burdening you either,” actually, she had failed just a little on that front. She wasn’t telling him all there was to her story. “For example, I liked going back to work today. I felt like I needed a bit of space for myself and I missed that,”

“Oh, really?” he questioned, slightly surprised. He couldn’t conceive the thought of being away from Clover, much less the idea of wanting to.

“Yeah. It’s healthy to have some me-time every once in a while. You really don’t want to lose yourself in parenthood.” Lucifer was looking at her as if she were saying the craziest things ever, while in reality, she was more than just in the right. “It’s okay if you, I don’t know, want to go to Lux one night. You just tell me and Clovie and I will manage,”

“I don’t like being away from her. What if she has a celestial outburst and I’m not there?” The celestial aspect of their reality was a bonus, and she couldn’t blame him for feeling afraid of it. After all, Clover was the first and only one of her species so far, they were completely blind to what her future would be like. 

“That’s the thing about co-parenting. We’re not single parents, we can rely on each other. I might not be an angel but I think I’ve seen enough to know how to deal with it?” She phrased it as a question, and upon imagining a situation where Clover’s celestiality came to be, Lucifer grew uneasy. 

“Yes, well… I’d rather not fight my instincts and just be here,” he argued, not wanting to even think of the possibility of it.

“Oh, come on! There must be something you miss about life without Clover. You’ve been two months without sex, I mean… I didn’t think you capable of going celibate that long,” she had wanted to feel ashamed about bringing something so private up, but firstly, she wanted him to open up to her and secondly, he had never been private about his sex life to begin with. In fact, sometimes he’d share far too much. 

“My my, I didn’t think my sex life was up for discussion,” a grin much like those he used to give her back when things were easier painted his face, and for a moment, Chloe felt like they had gone back in time. “Let me remind you, darling, sex with the devil is always on the table,” and maybe he said it because he really meant it, or maybe because he needed his bluntness to push Chloe away from the topic. Either way, the remark was successful in painting Chloe’s cheeks of a bright crimson color.

“Oh, no. No, no. While I love Clover with all my heart, I really don’t think the world, or us, needs another half and half baby,” and while she tried to laugh it off, the thought that Lucifer still found her attractive wormed its way into her mind, and now she was unable to make it leave. She wanted to be superficial and attribute his interest to the fact that her cup size had almost doubled since she gave birth, but she knew there was more to that.

“If you were to reconsider, Detective, the offer’s always standing,”

They had a child. They had spent one night together and from that had come a child they both loved. He had done so much for her, coming close to even giving up his life. And in a way, he actually did give it up. He had left everything he knew and wandered off into the unknown terrain of fatherhood, and it had been with her, not with some random woman he, too, slept with for just one night. It had to mean more than just a one-night stand and the assumption of his parental duties, right? Chloe could only hope.

They spent a while in silence, one that gradually went from mildly uncomfortable to completely the opposite. It spoke of a relationship whether it's parties were able to remain in a comfortable, quiet silence, and they sure could, which hopefully meant something.

The devil spent most of said silence thinking his present through. He never thought he’d be able to say it, but Chloe was being open with him and willing to let their relationship evolve. Maybe not romantically speaking, he didn’t know that, but she sure did want whatever it was they had to move forward. She had opened herself to vulnerability, to show it and watch it, and it felt oddly comforting, even if he still was unsure of giving in to it. Whatever it was that they had, it had never felt so true.

That was the moment when he found himself staring at her in a way far too alien to be his. It was almost like the way he used to stare at her, back when he thought her incapable of doing him any harm, but still so different. There was something sparking within him, a newfound curiosity, a will to know the precedence of what was laying underneath. It was an image so common, belonging to his day to day life, and yet, he found it so precious.

Chloe was feeding their daughter and looking at her with a love so pure it was dripping from her every pore. She would lovingly run the tip of her index finger through the baby’s cheek, touch her nose, and just smile down at her while a comfortable silence surrounded all of them. Clover was dimly shining the way he would whenever he was on the verge of too comfortable. It was barely noticeable but it was there, and everything just felt so happy.

Would it be so bad if the flame of his feelings were to be re-ignited? What even were those feelings he had once felt, and was on the brim of feeling again? He only knew that, as of late, whenever his eyes fell on the woman he shared a daughter with, his heart would do something funny, something that would leave him reconsidering if everything they went through to get there had even happened in the first place. It looked like part of a very cheap, Mexican soap opera if he thought objectively. So much drama, so much stuff going on at the same time it seemed to be taken out of a flint-hearted fiction.

Looking at her under the rays of a romantic light again, he allowed himself to feel, he allowed his gut to be the one to tell him whether everything going on inside his head even had a future. Truth be told, even the smallest of chances would do, and he soon enough found himself thinking that it wouldn’t be so bad. Not then, at least.

They had a stable, healthy, co-parenting relationship, their daughter was a happy little thing that did nothing but grow, and they had stability. For the first time since they met, they had stability in their relationship, and while it was something he appreciated, he had to admit that living the same life for two months had become slightly predictable. How many things would be at stake if they were to threaten that stability? At least just a little, nothing that would disturb the happy little being that was inevitably in the middle.

It was when he burped Clover and she barfed all over his expensive suit, letting Chloe’s beautiful laughter fill up the room, that he decided it was worth it. Whatever it was that he felt for her was worth it, and even if she had been a literal gift from God, she made him happy. He now wanted to see just how happy she could make him, how happy they could make each other.

Only that somewhere in Los Angeles, the consequences of their actions were brewing a beverage capable of bringing light to things that wanted to remain hidden.

Fixing the white collar he wore with great pride, the collar that stood for everything he believed in, Father Kinley retraced his actions, trying to pinpoint the exact moment where his plan went wrong. He had failed when Chloe was in Rome and at her most vulnerable, he had allowed the antichrist to become a thing. He had to stop them, or else there would be no time to stop the prophecy. He didn’t want to live in a world where evil triumphed, and if he had a say in it, he would stop it.

“William, you’ve grown obsessed. You need to stop, this isn’t healthy,” Bishop Hoffman said, but it was to no avail.

“Healthy isn’t the way we’re allowing the devil to roam the earth, bringing evil everywhere he goes,” he was blinded by his need for peace. “He’s brought the antichrist to life, for Christ’s sake!”

“How can you be so sure he’s the devil, huh? Why can’t he be some lunatic? Or someone with a really messed up childhood that… That turned to identifying as the devil to cope? We’re better than this, Will,” Hoffman insisted, but everything said went through one ear and out the other, Father Kinley choosing to be blind to Lucifer’s rather humble nature.

“I had the perfect way to bring light to him, to… To show the Church who he really is. Chloe told me he likes to make every case about himself, it should have worked perfectly,” he rambled, barely paying any mind to the words coming off Hoffman’s mouth. “I need to bring them down from the inside, to… I need to force him and that evil spawn down to hell. I must,”

“I’m sorry, Will. I’m not going to help you. You’ve gone sick, man,” as per usual, Kinley didn’t hear a word he said, all focused on the plan he had to set to make sure Lucifer went back to where he belonged. As it turns out, if you want things done, you must do them yourself.

He would be bringing them down, even if it was the last thing he did, even if he’d lose himself in the process. He’d rather save the world from an apocalyptic prophecy than to abide by morality’s standards. He knew better than that, and this time, he would not fail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter’s title is... *drumrolls like an idiot*... “The devil has green eyes”. Mhmmmmm what could that possibly mean???
> 
> Leave a comment down below telling me what you think of this chapter! There’s nothing that motivates me more to keep writing than reading your feedback!
> 
> I wish you the happiest of Christmases and we’ll be seeing each other at 5pm PST on New Year’s Day!
> 
> Lots of love!


	11. The devil has green eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!! Happy new year everyone!! I hope yours started off better than mine did hahah. 
> 
> Those of you that guessed we’ll see a jealous devil, well, let me tell you, you were right!! Lucifer will be jealous, but of whom??
> 
> Chapter 12 will be up on Friday 15th because I still haven’t finished it 😳😳. The next one after that will be up when I’m done and it’s beta’d. 
> 
> I hope you had nice holidays and that you all took care of your families by staying home and safe. Not exactly what we did but well, the situation in Uruguay is far different than it is for the rest of the world (the pandemic isn’t actually as bad), and my family is really small (we’re 7 in total), so we did get together, precautions and all. 
> 
> I hope you liked my Christmas gift to you all *wink wink*
> 
> With nothing but a huge thank you to say (guys, we have over 6k hits already, that’s amazing!), I’ll leave you to chapter 11. 
> 
> All my love, Rena.

“Are you excited we’re picking your mum up from work?” The devil asked his daughter as he got her ready in a more presentable outfit. No one would ever say Lucifer Morningstar’s daughter wasn’t dressed to perfection. 

The nine-week-old baby kicked her legs happily as her father tried to ease a short-sleeved onesie and some patterned, ruffled shorts on her, making his job just a little bit more difficult. She cracked a big smile and the devil felt weak in the knees. 

Chloe’s car had broken down two days ago and it would take around a week to get it fixed, which meant Lucifer had to take his sedan out of the garage and put it to good use. He had bought it a couple of months after arriving on earth when his Corvette had become slightly inconvenient on some occasions. Problem is, his car was manual and Chloe only knew how to drive automatic, which meant she needed to be dropped off at work and picked up. She hated the lack of independence, but both Lucifer and Clover secretly loved dropping her off and picking her up every day for a week. 

“We’re ahead of an exciting week for you, then,” he concluded when his daughter just kept on kicking her legs. He put some socks and a headband on her, both with a bow on them, and deemed her presentable. “Please, don’t crap yourself now, okay? Not until we get to the precinct, at least,” she cooed just a bit, and Lucifer took that as an affirmative response. 

He picked his daughter up with his right hand and grabbed the pre-packed diaper bag with the left, briefly stopping to think of how hilarious that image of himself must have been. Who would’ve thought?

Fastening her daughter on her carseat and taking a seat on the driver’s side of his black, BMW M4 sedan, he drove towards the precinct to pick Chloe up, relishing in the tranquility that washed all over Clover whenever they were in a moving vehicle. Sometimes, mainly when the two-month-old got colic, going for a ride in the car would be the only way to make her fall asleep. 

He drove towards the precinct with care, a thing he had learnt to do only once Clover became a part of his life. He would have never guessed driving without taking the speed limit into consideration would be as terrifying with a baby in the car. 

He swiftly pulled over in Chloe’s designated parking space and got a move on, fearing he’d be late when in reality, most of the time he would have to stick around until Chloe finished paperwork. 

Walking into the precinct, even with a baby on his right arm and a diaper bag hanging from his left shoulder, felt just as exciting as it did back when he was still working. Greeting everyone, smelling the characteristic scent of burnt coffee and body odor had never felt so good, and the smile on his face was as genuine as it could possibly get.

“Samantha,” he nodded his way through the front door, smiling back at the woman in the front desk before entering the bullpen. “Cacuzza,” he greeted the rookie officer he knew liked to take occasional naps in the evidence room. He’d stop for baby cooing and greetings later. “Good afternoon, Detective,” he twirled swiftly and leaned over the glass panel to the side of Chloe’s desk, finding her with her nose buried in an unfathomable amount of paperwork. A new normal, one might say. 

“Shit, it's already one?” And much like every day, the four hours Chloe was working weren’t enough to get all her paperwork done. 

“I was rooting for a warmer welcome, but hey. It is what it is,” the devil teased and Chloe smiled up to him, feeling the usual cluster of butterflies flying around her stomach. 

“Is that my baby?” She put on her slightly higher mom voice and reached for Clover, swiftly taking her from her father’s arms and cuddling her. “Hi sweetie. Mommy missed you,” she kissed her on the cheeks 

“Why of course, Detective. I would never lay my hands on a child not of your making. You never know where they’ve been,” and while he was a father himself now, he still despised unknown children. 

“Of course you’d say that,” she laughed lightly and brought her focus back to her baby girl. Sadly, she had to finish her paperwork before leaving and would have to hand her over to her dad sometime soon. “Hey, do you mind waiting half an hour? I still have some paperwork I need to finish,”

“My pleasure,” he reached forward and took Clover from Chloe’s arms, rendering her able to work. “There’s nothing I want more than to interact with someone that doesn’t barf or crap all over themselves. Namely, adults. No offense, sweetheart,”

“You’re the best, thank you,” something felt comfortably warm in Lucifer’s belly, but he would never comment on that. 

The devil smiled one last time to the detective and wandered off to the lab to meet with Ella. She had been so busy that the last time he saw her was during his failed attempt at going back to work. Truth be told, the devil was concerned for his friend. He cared about her more than he did any of his sisters. And he had many of them. 

“Oh my god!” She said excitedly, dropping off what she was doing and rushing to her friend. “Is that little Clover I’m seeing there?!” The forensic scientist took the infant out of her father’s arms without asking for permission. “Auntie Ella missed you so much Clo-clo,”

“I guess I’m just invisible now,” he greeted her as he walked in unannounced, being blatantly ignored by his ‘sister from another mister’ as Ella had once referred to herself as.

“Oh, sorry man. It’s just that your kid is too cute for this world,” she apologized half-heartedly, holding Clover up over her head and cracking up a wider smile when the baby smiled down at her. 

“That we can agree on,” he placed the diaper bag on a chair nearby and briefly smiled at the encounter. He truly did care more about Ella than he did any of his siblings, and he couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about it. “So, what have you been up to? How’s crime in LA since your favourite devil decided to become a stay at home dad?”

“Oh, it’s not too bad. Chloe and Dan are working cases together, you know… The ush,” and just as Ella said that, his eyes wandered off to the lab’s window and landed on something he really disliked.

By Chloe’s desk was a man he didn’t know. And he didn’t like that picture at all, not even a little bit. He was leaning over suggestively, popping out a hip and clearly saying something not along the lines of the job they apparently shared, since he also had a badge hanging from his belt.

Something bubbled over inside of him, like a pot of milk furiously boiling without control. It was ugly, uncomfortable, uncalled for, but it was there, and he needed to do something about it. God only knew no one wanted to find out what would happen if he didn’t.

“Oh no, no, no,” he mumbled and, like a wave of impulse washing over him, he felt desperate to walk over to Chloe’s desk and stop that newcomer’s charade. 

“What? I thought you and Dan were best buddies now,” Ella’s eyes briefly diverted from the infant and, upon realizing what was going on, a smile took over her face. “Oh, yeah… That,” she was quick to realize that Lucifer was jealous, even if he would deny it every single time it was brought up. 

“Who even is that?” he asked, trying to compose himself. Fatherhood had changed him to an extent where he almost couldn’t recognize himself.

“That is Detective Adam Hale. He’s been transferred from the 6-4 a couple of weeks ago,” Ella explained, amused by the situation. 

“Excuse me, but I have to...” he felt an uneasy feeling growing on him, and instinct to just walk over to Chloe's desk and claim what was his.

“I just read your intentions and I wouldn't do that, buddy,” Ella interceded, physically stopping him from leaving the room and forcing him to watch the interaction through the window. “Chloe is secondary on one of his cases and it’s a big one,”

“I couldn’t care less how big the case is, have you seen the way…? He… That’s completely inappropriate!” there was a bit of hypocrisy underlining his words, for he had been plenty inappropriate when he and Chloe worked together, and it didn’t go unnoticed by Miss Lopez. She smiled smugly, immediately understanding the reasoning behind his behavior. 

“I mean, It’s not like you behaved any better when you worked here,” the glare he gave her was piercing. “Though you actually managed to get her into the sack at least once. Hale, though… We’ll have to see,” had the devil been clutching anything with his hands, he would've shattered it. 

Jealousy was an ugly emotion, and he felt far too ashamed of himself to even be feeling it, but staring at Chloe as she was charmed by the words of a man that wasn’t him made something boil inside of him. He had been foolish enough to think that, because they shared a child, they also shared other aspects of life that didn’t necessarily involve Clover. How wrong had he been when he saw her give the other man a wide smile, one that was too close to being like the ones she used to give him. 

“Excuse me, but I have to go have a little chat with… Detective Halitosis,” he swiftly took his daughter from his friend’s arms and cradled her comfortably, acting on instinct. 

“How do you even know if he has halitosis?” Ella managed to say right before Lucifer stepped out of the lab, set on following the human that had tried to make a move on Chloe. Well, or so he thought, since he hadn’t actually heard the conversation.

He followed Detective Hale into the bullpen and towards the kitchenette the precinct had, catching a glimpse of his looks. He was of above average height but not even close to his own six foot three frame. He had blonde, slightly wavy hair and green borderline turquoise eyes. Objectively speaking, the man was a hunk. He met all his criteria with flying colors and, were he not trying to pursue the mother of his child so effusively, Lucifer would consider getting him into the sac himself. Sadly, that would never happen. 

Through his mind went all kinds of insults regarding the made-up halitosis and the excessive drinking of coffee, alongside petty commentary on all of his flaws. Like the way a computer works, he collected all the information the environment could give him, all so he could use it against his enemy. He had to admit to the foreigner’s beauty, but he also had to admit to his own jealousy.

“Hello there,” he said with his characteristic tone, catching Hale’s attention with ease. “I don't believe we’ve met. I’m Lucifer, Lucifer Morningstar,” 

“Oh, the guy who owns Lux,” he acknowledged him. “And who’s this little cutie?” He tried to lean forward and talk to his daughter, but the devil swiftly moved backwards, wanting to keep the halitosis away from his daughter.

“That’s my daughter and she’s none of your business.” He scoffed in disgust when he proved his point. The human’s nickname did him justice, his breath was truly terrible. “I’ll cut straight to the chase. Whatever it is you’re trying to do by insinuating yourself to Detective Decker the way you just did, it’s not gonna work. Back off, she’s spoken for,”

“Oh, is she?” Hale immediately responded to the devil’s threatening statement, trying to stand taller against the darker man but failing miserably since he was a good three to four inches shorter. “No ring on her finger, no pictures of a significant other on her desk, I’d say she’s single alright,”

“Look, it’s in everyone’s best interest that you do not pursue her,” he had wanted to keep on talking, but the man named like the first human alive spoke up.

“Yeah, and you care because...?” he said with a mocking tone, eyeing him up and down. He disgustingly ogled past him and at Chloe as she bent over her desk to pick up some case files, fixing himself in the process. Lucifer couldn’t help it but think he was a disgusting pig.

“Because, as it turns out, I’m her daughter’s father and I know for a fact that she’s been with one too many imbeciles in the past to afford adding one more to the pile,” the sight of him holding a baby really did take away the threatening tone of his words. “I’d like to kindly suggest you back off and mind your own businesses,”

“Listen, unless you two are a thing, you back off.” Childishly as ever, he used the devil’s own words against him. “Otherwise, I’m gonna go solve a murder, and then get ready for the date she agreed to go on. With me.”

Finding himself speechless at the detective’s words, the devil allowed him to walk away victoriously, holding the pride of having had the last word. Chloe had agreed to going on a date? With that scumbag? How on earth had that happened? Something had to be seriously wrong or someone up above was having a really great time laughing at his luck, or maybe tweaking it a little. 

He wouldn’t lie, he had hoped for something better. He didn’t know what Chloe’s stance was regarding her romantic future, but he did know he was a part of her romantic past, and that maybe, he wouldn’t totally mind catching feelings for her again. If that excuse for a human with far too much bacteria inside his mouth to be considered healthy could waltz into their lives and snatch Chloe away, and he hadn’t managed to scare him off, then what was left for him to do? 

“Hey there, bud,” he had been so absorbed by his catastrophic train of thought that he failed to notice Daniel had walked up to the kitchenette with the intent of making himself a cup of coffee. “Buddy,” Dan called him again, but to no avail. “Lucifer!” He almost had to scream at him for the devil to notice he had arrived. 

“Oh, Daniel, didn’t see you come,” his mind was lost, wandering off to a time when he could just wait a couple of decades, the blink of an eye for a celestial being, and then he would have Detective Halitosis all for him, in his playground, where he could dismember him over and over again. 

“You okay? You’re putting the same face that Maze puts when she really wants to torture someone but she can’t,” over the months, Dan had gained a decent ability to read celestials’ intentions and how to cope with them. Mostly so, that is. 

“That seems about right,” his eyes diverted to stare at Detective Halitosis’ back as the man handed in some evidence to an officer, and Dan followed his eyes. 

“Oh, Hale. He’s pissing you off, too?” He poured himself a cup of coffee as he stood beside the devil, eyeing the man they so despised. “He’s an asshole, but he does have a nice closure rate. The only one above him is Chloe,” 

“I couldn’t care less about his closure rate,” the devil took advantage of Dan’s brief distraction when he went to get sugar, snatching the served cup of plain, black coffee from him. He sipped from it as Daniel stared at him mildly annoyed, reading the ‘#1 dad’ inscription as it was the cup Trixie had gifted him for Father’s Day. “I care that he’s thrown himself at the detective, very inappropriately might I add,” Dan scoffed a laugh as he prepared himself another cup of coffee, making faces to the baby that was silently staring at them from the comfort of her father’s arms. “And you want to know what the worst thing is? He asked her out and she said yes!” He was outraged. 

“Wait, he asked her out?” Dan looked away from the baby and up at the devil, surprised by the words coming out of his mouth. “How did that happen? I thought you guys were going out,”

“Us? You mean… The detective and I? Pff, please… We’re in a strict, co-parenting relationship, nothing else,” he said dismissively, trying to hide the fact that Chloe going out with someone else made his heart hurt just a tiny bit. 

“Yeah… And I was born this morning,” Lucifer looked at him with the hope he would let it slide, but Dan had other intentions. “If you two aren’t together, then why does it bother you so much that she’s going out with someone?”

“It doesn’t bother me that she goes out with someone, it bothers me that it’s with him, out of all people,” he took another sip of his stolen coffee and placed it down, unable to think of anything other than the fact that Chloe could very well be going out with an idiot undeserving of her grace. “Then again, she married you. She’s known to make ovation-worthy mistakes with her love life,” and there it went, the humor he refugied himself under. “I just don’t understand why she’d even consider going out with someone like that. Oh, the fun I’d have with a snotty brat like him if I was still in Hell,” 

“Do you wanna know why she agreed to go on a date with him?” Dan asked him, putting on a smile because he finally discovered what it was that was bothering the devil to such an extent. She had picked someone that wasn’t him, and even if he would deny it a thousand times, he was bummed out about it. 

“What can you possibly know about women?” At Dan’s stern look, Lucifer chose to listen. “Let’s see, then. Why did she go out with Detective Halitosis?”

“Because he asked her out, which is more than what can be said about you,” and that did it. It shut him up. 

“Wha… Now you’re just spewing nonsense. If I wanted to be with her I would’ve made a move ages ago,” he argued, but it was to no avail. “Besides, I… If what you’re saying were true, it wouldn’t be my place to tell her so. She’s made her choice to go out with that scumbag, and the perk to humanity is that you all don’t have to rebel to get free will,” 

“Yeah, she’s decided to go out with him, but because she doesn't know all her options, she doesn't know you’re an option. In a way, by not telling her how you feel, you’re taking her choice away, too,” he had to admit to himself that there was some truth to Dan’s words, but he would never admit it out loud. 

“Bollocks,” he cursed, not caring that his two-month-old was hearing the entire conversation. She’d forget about it in less than ten minutes. 

“Buddy, I think you know what you need to do, don’t you?” Lucifer sighed, assuming his fate. 

Chloe chose that moment to deem her paperwork finished and walk up to the fathers of her daughters, reaching out and grabbing Clover from Lucifer’s arms without as much as saying a word.

“Oh, my baby girl. I missed you so much,” she kissed both of her cheeks once and then placed her chest to chest, letting her little head rest on her left shoulder, relishing in the fresh scent of a baby. “You done gossiping around?” She asked both men and they awkwardly smiled, Lucifer through a shaky sigh and Daniel through a smug glare. 

“Most definitely,” the devil answered, searching for an excuse not to devote all his attention towards Chloe. He busied his hands fixing up the diaper bag, but that was far from enough. 

“Dan, can you bring Trixie over to my place after school? I miss my oldest baby, too,” Dan was still smiling smugly, result of his newfound discovery. After all, the rather unsolicited advice he had given had been of use to the devil, whether he chose to take action or not. 

Hearing those words, plus the confirmation on Daniel’s side, made the devil question his interaction with Detective Halitosis. He had mentioned that the date was later that day, which would mean Chloe would most likely leave Clover with him and the spawn with Daniel, as she would do anytime she had to leave the house for anything other than work. She would never make either Daniel nor Lucifer look after both her daughters on their own. The amount of times the devil had watched over Trixie could be counted with the fingers of one hand, while the amount of times Clover had been under Dan’s care was literally zero.

“Lucifer!” The echo of Chloe’s voice as she called his name rose in volume until she had to almost yell it to catch the devil’s attention.

“Oh, sorry,” he apologized for his zoning out, occupying his hands with the lapels of his suit. “What did I miss?”

“Oh, nothing, I was just asking if you were ready to go home,” he would never get tired of hearing Chloe refer to her shoebox of an apartment as their home. That was a word that had lost its meaning for so long, and the coming of just one human and one hybrid changed it all. 

“Yes… Yes, of course,” he answered, mentally slapping himself for zoning out on Dan and Chloe and forcing his mind to stay present. There was something about Chloe’s date that didn’t add up, and it bothered him.

After saying quick and polite goodbyes to Daniel, the devil and the miracle left the precinct, embarking on a walk towards the parking lot in a comfortable silence. Lucifer’s head was still trying to process all the information he had, and it was far from an easy task. Most likely, Detective Halitosis had lied to him, he could see that happening, and yet… He didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t want to get his hopes up.

“Hey, are you okay?” Chloe asked him from the comfort of the driver’s seat, having put Clover on her carseat beforehand. “You seem… More off than usual,”

“I… Well, it’s complicated,” he answered, hoping he wouldn’t have to face the elephant inside his head. It was so heavy it was beginning to crush his heart, too.

“Well, if I’ve learnt something from my years of working with you, and my months of co-parenting with you, is that most often, your problems aren’t as complicated as you make them out to be,” she said as she started her car, all without looking at him. “You know I’m here for you, right?”

He nodded softly, relishing briefly in the melody of those seven words.

“And I, you, Detective,” he sighed, badly wanting to ease her mind. “It’s just...” while he wanted to come clean, he also didn’t want her to know just how badly it troubled him the idea of her dating someone else, even more so if it was someone like Detective Hale. “Are you really going on a date with Detective Halitosis?” and well, saying she wasn’t expecting that was more than just an understatement. 

“Oh, so he already has a nickname?” she answered with a question, driving the car into the highway and heading home.

“And a very fitting one, might I add. There is no way it’s healthy for a human to have that much bacteria inside their mouth,” Chloe cracked a laugh, agreeing with the devil.

“Yeah, it’s bad,” the fact that Chloe wasn’t blind to Hale’s halitosis was calming for Lucifer. “Why do you care, though?”

“Oh, well… Wouldn’t want you out and about with someone that smells that bad, I mean… The risk of catching an infection is off the charts,” Chloe chuckled again, and although she was genuinely amused, she wasn’t blind to the devil’s deflecting. “But seriously, though, he’s a pig,”

“I know,” and Lucifer had never felt more relieved in his entire life. 

“You do?” he questioned, still slightly unsure.

“Yeah, he asked me out and wouldn't take no for an answer. Kind of reminded me of you,” she knew what she was getting herself into by making that comparison, and she honestly couldn’t wait to laugh at his reaction.

“Excuse you!” he said, annoyed and relieved at the same time. “How dare you compare that human piece of garbage to someone like me?”

“Persistence in the face of adversity,” she chuckled wholeheartedly, allowing herself to see that version of Lucifer as his jealous self. “You can quit freaking out. Much like I did with you, I told him no. I don’t think I even have the time for dating right now, much less dating someone that smells that bad,”

“That is not what he’s told me,” he tried to contain the duality of his excitement and disappointment as he spoke, relieved that his cozy little present wouldn’t be disturbed but saddened by her words.

“Oh, so he’s going around the precinct telling everyone he’s dating me? Great,” the sarcasm in her voice was palpable.

“Only me, as far as I’m aware,” the devil sighed with a mixture of content and uneasiness. Damn it, emotions were so bloody inconvenient. “So… Are you really not going to date anymore?” sue him, but he had to ask. He felt the weight of the lack of a confirmation sitting on his chest and it was far from pleasant.

“No. Between Clover and work and all the celestial craziness around us, I… I just don't know how I’d be able to handle it all,” she answered, with her focus right where it should be: on traffic. Of course, were they talking about a certain someone that was back to worming his way into Chloe’s heart, and maybe her posture would change, but sadly that wasn’t the case. They were talking about Detective Halitosis, and Chloe had no intentions whatsoever of going out with a man so similar to a pig.

“Oh, that’s a pity. There’s a poor chap somewhere, hopefully with better breath, that’s been thoroughly disappointed,” he joked and the detective cracked yet another laugh. How come being around Lucifer could be so easy and so hard at the same time?

“I’m sure he can wait,” she responded, which ended up with the car sinking into a comfortable silence.

Could he wait, though? Lucifer couldn’t help it but think, worse even, hope, that the poor chap with significantly better breath were him. Dan’s words were resonating inside his head like an annoying echo he couldn’t rid himself of, and he couldn’t help it but admit he was right. The only reason why there was ever a chance of Chloe going out with Hale was because he had asked her out, whereas he couldn’t say he had even tried. If he wanted to ever have a relationship with Chloe that not only involved work or Clover, he would have to make a move, and the sole thought terrified him. It scared him almost as much as the thought of Chloe loving someone else, of Chloe letting some other man into her and their daughter’s life. God, he could now begin to imagine how Daniel must have felt. He felt so sorry for him.

Chloe, on the other hand, had a train of thought that was heading sort of in the same direction. If she wanted things to be as great as they were, or even better, she would have to make a move. She knew that whenever they chose to go back to living on their own, Lucifer would be quick to rebound, to get all the sex and drugs and alcohol he had missed. While she wanted his happiness more than anything, she also wanted to be able to share it, to take part in it. A chance at a happy ending wouldn’t come to her doorstep and kindly knock on her door, she would have to go out of her comfort zone and chase after it. Maybe that car ride would be what she needed to finally tackle it and take it home.

“Besides...” she started, feeling her heart take on a quicker beat. “I’ve already got my eye set on someone who smells far better,” her eyes never leave the road, either because she needs to pay attention to her driving, or because she wants to avoid staring into Lucifer’s eyes as said words came out of her mouth.

“Oh, don’t you now?” she heard his usual suggestiveness in his tone, alongside with something else she couldn’t quite place. “What happened to your desire not to date anymore?”

“Well… For this guy I think I’d make an exception,” she admitted, feeling her cheeks gain both heat and color.

Silence wrapped itself around the gray cruiser as Chloe’s words settled in, an entangled maze of emotions circling inside both their heads. It was then or never, Chloe had to know all her options, it wouldn’t be fair otherwise. Besides, if they were to work out as a couple, neither of them would have to be away from Clover as they would most likely keep on living together. He had to try for the sake of his own heart, and for the sake of their daughter. 

“Actually, Daniel’s made me realize something today,” he started, not knowing what to do with his hands as he opened himself up to his possibilities. 

“Oh, did he?” she questioned him with a slightly amused undertone to her voice, making the devil scoff light-heartedly.

“I’m embarrassed enough as it is, no need to rub it in,” the commentary made Chloe laugh, one of those laughs that brought a special shine to her beautiful blue eyes. Lucifer sighed, ready to move on. “Point is… He’s made me realize why you’d even consider going out with a pig such as Detective Halitosis in the first place.”

“Why is that?” she understood he was nervous, so hopefully chining in into his, but really Daniel’s, epiphany would help him through it.

“Because… Well, because you knew he was an option,” Chloe’s breath hitched and she knew Lucifer had noticed. It wasn’t because she didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken, no, in fact, she loved the subjacent intentions of Lucifer’s words. She just had to remind herself not to get ahead of time. “He actually asked you out, he took a risk. Bad breath and all,”

“He did, yeah,” she said, exhaling shakily at the end of her remark.

“And… Daniel’s helped me realize that the same can’t be said about me, either about my breath or the fact that… Well, I haven’t taken a risk,” Lucifer noticed as Chloe’s breath hitched once again, not knowing what to make of it, not knowing how to interpret her reactions. “So… I don’t know that I am the man you’d make an exception for in your strict no dating policy, but… I hope you know that well, should youー,”

And Chloe, impatient as ever and with pretty much the smallest amount of self-control lingering in her body, bursted. 

“Do you want to go on a date with me, Lucifer?” She asked, hoping that having her take the lead of their conversation would a) get them to the eventual destination faster and b) relieve some of the pressure Lucifer was clearly feeling. 

“I… Yes, that would be lovely,” he admitted, not alien to the warm blush that crept up Chloe’s neck on its way to her cheeks.

“Good. Tomorrow night? We can leave Clover and Trixie at Linda and Amenadiel’s, and… I don’t know. Guess you’ll have to come up with the rest,” the rush of admitting it out loud, to him out of all people, was exhilarating. 

“That’s… Actually a very good idea. That way Linda and my brother can get a hold of what’s coming for them when my nephew is born,” Chloe smiled at the thought, remembering when she found out that Amenadiel and Linda were also expecting a half and half baby. “So… It’s a date then?”

“Sure. Hope you haven’t forgotten how to surprise me,” the tone of her voice had been slightly flirtatious, but she guessed she deserved it now that they would be going on a date.

“Oh, that I haven’t you can be sure of.” He smiled genuinely, feeling that for the first time in a very long while, things were coming up Lucifer.

They were in a car, not the most romantic setting to ask someone out on a date, but it was them. Their daughter was probably asleep in her carseat, judging by the lack of sounds coming from the backseat of the car, and they were heading home. That was a word that had lost meaning so long ago. He truly couldn’t remember a time when he felt safe enough to call a place ‘home’. 

It was as they were heading to their place, date plans and ideas frolicking around in his head, that he understood why he was never able to call a place ‘home’. Because home isn’t a place, it’s a person. It’s the safety one can feel when they are around, is the feeling of normalcy that lingers beyond what humanity understands of time. 

He couldn’t take a leap of faith and call Chloe his home yet, but he surely was looking forward to the day he could. To the day he could look at her and have all of his problems melt away as if they were made of ice cream on a summer day.

Excited for what was ahead of him, he kept on planning and thinking, feeling for the first time that maybe, not all was lost. That maybe, the final image of the jigsaw puzzle he was blindly putting together would turn out to be his happiness. His family.

And so, with the silent but comfortable company of Chloe as they drove to their place, he allowed himself to smile, hopeful that everything would turn out to be as beautiful as he had imagined it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you now don’t know what to do with your life, and you like plotless, shameless smut, on my profile I have a 7k filthy, Deckerstar one-shot for you all to read. It’s called “You make me feel golden” and it was my Christmas gift to all your nasty souls. There are two follow-ups coming whenever I manage to write them hahha. 
> 
> Next chapter’s title is called “On the edge of great” and it’s taken straight from the soundtrack of Julie and the Phantoms, thank you very much. 
> 
> Take care y’all, lots of love!


	12. On the edge of great

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, guys, I'm so sorry I couldn't post yesterday! I had a suuuper hectic day and when I got home I went straight to bed, I'm sooooo soooooo sorry!
> 
> Either way, here you have chapter 12 for your reading enjoyment. I really liked writing this and I have a feeling I'll love writing chapter 13. There's nothing I love more than angst hahaha. Also, for those of you who read SGTDE, brace yourselves because this bitch has gone back to her old, cliffhanger days!
> 
> There's some good and bad news though. I don't have chapter 13 ready, and I don't know when I'll finish it. What I do know is that I'll go back to uploading as soon as a chapter is finished and my beta reads it and corrects it. That could mean that you could have two chapters in a week because yours truly is inspired af, but that could also mean I could take a month to update, or more even. I surely hope it doesn't happen, but I'm just warning you for if it does!
> 
> With nothing but a huge thank you to say, I'll leave you to "On the edge of great", whose title I shamelessly stole from Julie and The Phantoms' soundtrack.
> 
> All my love, Rena.

“How did you even come up with this in just a day?” Surprise was tainting Chloe’s voice as she opened the big, square box before her. Inside, underneath the soft tissue paper, lay a red, luxurious dress that looked to be far too expensive to be real. 

“Darling, you’re going on a date with the devil. From now on, get used to being thoroughly surprised...” he said suggestively, walking behind her and looking at the strapless, red dress in the box from over her shoulder, casually leaning closer to her left ear. “Amongst other things,” he added.

They hadn’t talked about how their sex life was going to be. After all, they were just going on their first date ever, but neither of them could keep their bodies from showing the truth. As Lucifer leaned closer and Chloe embraced his body heat and proximity, it was all too clear that they were in the same page about sex. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time and they were both pretty desperate for some physical contact.

“Now, you go upstairs and you have one hour to get yourself looking pretty,” he ordered her, looking at her with a spark that had been long gone for so much time. All it took was for Chloe to come back to his life. “Prettier than usual,” he added, wanting to kiss her badly but keeping himself on track. They had agreed on a date, kisses came after that. 

“Okay. Can you watch Clover?” the detective asked as she put the lid back on the box where her dress lay in, wanting to put it on and finally go on that very anticipated date. 

“I’ve got it covered. Now, chop chop,” with a smile, the detective went upstairs, trying to think of a nice way to do her hair so that it would go well with the dress, amongst other things. “Off to getting ready you go,”

Alone in the living room, all the devil had left to do was prepare a bag for his daughter, who would be well taken care of by Linda and Amenadiel, alongside her older sister. That and getting himself ready, of course. Thankfully, the littlest urchin was asleep and the eldest had already been dropped off at Linda’s by her father, so there was only one minor for Lucifer to look after and she wouldn’t impose too much trouble. 

He made quick work of putting bags of milk on a cooler, alongside some bottles and different plastic nipples in case Clover didn’t feel like taking the usual one. Truth be told, she wasn’t all too used to drinking from a bottle just yet and it was taking both him and Chloe quite a long time to get her used to anything other than the breast. Lucifer would have to feed her a bottle when Chloe was at work, and to make the transition on her a little bit easier, he would also have to do her nighttime feeding that way. The infant hadn’t been happy the first couple of days, but she was slowly but surely starting to learn.

A couple of minutes into the hour he gave Chloe to get ready, he deemed Clover’s diaper bag full enough for her to spend her evening at his brother's, so he set it aside right by the infant’s swing, where she was comfortably napping. After making sure that the baby was fast asleep and that there were no choking hazards anywhere nearby, Lucifer sighed and sorted himself out to the downstairs bathroom, intedning on putting on his tuxedo as fast as angelically possible. The thought of leaving his two-month-old alone in a room, even if it was just for a couple of minutes and he was nearby, made him sick to the stomach.

He had never been as fast to get himself ready ever before. Well… At least in the clothing department. Once the tux was on and fitting him as well as ever before, he walked out of the bathroom as if he’d seen a ghost. The weight of knowing if his girl was safe was compressing his heart, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to manage to take a ride in a helicopter and go to the opera with Chloe if Clover wasn’t with them. Truth be told, he had restored to angelical means of communication when he asked his brother to look after the infant, specifically stating that, should anything be wrong with her, he prayed to him. After all, prayer was to him none other than a means to deliver bad news.

After checking his two-month-old and finding her still fast asleep, he got started on his hair. He walked towards the mirror in the hallway, pot of hair wax and a can of hairspray in hand and he did his signature quiff, figuring that going for something new could backfire. Then again, he was an angel. Humanity’s standards of beauty were based upon them so, technically, anything would and could look perfect on him.

Everything was going well, so much so that it was getting suspicious. The helicopter was in place and would fly them over Los Angeles and to San Francisco at sunset, pick them up when they were done and, had they not had a child together, take them to the penthouse to accomplish the not so family friendly perks of dating. However, given the fact that they were now parents and had other responsibilities, playful times would have to wait.

It was as he was finishing his hairstyle that the doorbell rang, startling the two-month-old hybrid and waking her up from her nap. As any sensible father, Lucifer tended to his daughter first, picking her up and trying to soothe her as he walked towards the main entryway. Mainly because she had been startled, she was now crying loudly, laying on her belly on her father’s forearm as he bounced her up and down, trying to soothe her.

He opened the front door, an annoyed expression painting his features as he really couldn’t (and didn’t want to) afford any distractions. Needless to say, the person on the other side of the door wasn’t greeted by the best version of himself.

“Who are you?” His expression turned into a mixture of annoyance and amusement when the white spark of the collar the stranger wore around his neck caught his eye. A priest, then. Not the first time, nor would it be the last one. “By the looks of it, I can almost say you do know me, though,” the wailing of his daughter did take the seriousness out of the conversation, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

“I’m Father Kinley.” he said in a weird accent, very archaic. He could almost picture his demons laughing at him, thinking he sounded like a pirate. “I’m here because… There’s something you need to know about Chloe Decker,” The priest said, faking politeness as he looked down to the bundle the devil was holding, barely masking his grimace of disgust. He also managed to slip in some false concern, too, but millennia of existence told Lucifer he didn’t really feel it.

Lucifer’s semblance did change, though, in spite of the knowledge that the priest was being as condescending as humankind could manage. He had mentioned The Detective, therefore, he did have to know something.

“Forgive me, Father… for not inviting you in. I have an aversion to the cloth. Daddy issues, long story,” Lucifer stepped out of the house halfway and closed the door behind him, keeping the cleric from staring into his home. He had a feeling the conversation would be short-lived. “Whatever it is you need to tell me, do it now and fast. I believe you understand why,” hinting at his daughter, he stared at the priest expectantly

“I understand. I… I do apologize for the intrusion, Mister Morningstar. Please, allow me to explain myself.” he apologized, letting Lucifer know he was slightly wary of his presence.

“Excellent course of action,” he swallowed a scoff, not knowing what to make of the priest’s intrusion.

“You see, I’m not a normal priest.” At that, the devil laughs, relishing in the fact that his daughter’s whimpering had diminished significantly, and she was now just resting on her father’s comfortable embrace.

“Was there ever such a thing?” he questioned, an ironic smile plastered on his face.

“I mean, I’m not a normal priest in the sense that I don’t have my own congregation. I am a… I am an investigator for The Vatican,” Lucifer had been set on dismissing the Father’s words from the moment he opened the door, yet now, he was finding amusement in the conversation. Humans could go to great lengths to explain their existence and question his own, and he had to admit, they were getting more and more creative by the minute. He couldn’t lie, that interaction was bringing him back to his old ways, to his ancient way of talking back, and he was certainly loving it.

“Vatican investigator?” he asked upon reading the card the priest handed him. “Sounds like a soon-to-be-cancelled TV show,”

“Oh, I assure you, it’s a very real job. I’ve spent the last forty years traveling the globe in pursuit of the demonic. I know the divine is real,” even if, in this particular case, the priest was correct, it didn’t fail to amuse the devil in the sense that the man clearly thought his words were of a superior order, the word of someone humanity could trust. “And I also know that evil walks the earth. And that you, Mister Morningstar, areー,”

“Oh, brother, here we go,” he said sarcastically, expecting the impeachment.

“ーAre not it.” Kinely continued without so much as hearing the sarcasm in his voice, a greater good clouding his cryptic mind.

The devil took a brief interval of time to process the meaning of those words, even more so the fact that they had been spoken by a man of the cloth, a priest. That had been a surprise, to say the least. He had met priests throughout time that appeared to be gentle souls and truly kind people, but their semblance always changed the minute he told them what his name was. In the best of scenarios, they would just assume he had taken the devil’s identity because of underlying trauma, but others would just shut him down completely, even trying to exorcise him out. If they only knew exorcisms did nothing. Humans were and would always be completely helpless to celestial law.

“Not quite what I was expecting,” he admitted, eyeing him up and down and expecting the inevitable rejection. “So, if I’m not the devil, then why are you here? And what does any of this have to do with The Detective?” He questioned, briefly noticing that lover had gone back to sleep in the comfort of his arms. “If you haven’t noticed, I have my hands quite full, so I’d appreciate it if you went straight to the point.”

“Because Miss Decker believes that you are,” the devil felt uneasy because, for the first time in a long while, he was unable to fully read the priest’s intentions. They surely weren’t seeking his wellbeing, so why would he bother? “About nine months ago, she came to Rome with a most outlandish tale. The devil himself is hiding in plain sight, masquerading as a nightclub owner in Los Angeles, and that he’d revealed himself to her.”

“Well… This is wonderful news.” And he did think so, but he couldn’t quite place the reason for the Father’s intrusion yet.

“Wonderful? How so?” Kinley asked, genuinely conflicted.

“Well, as my therapist would sayーI know, so LA… But she’d say that talking about your issues was the first step in dealing with them,” then again, Cgloe had spent half a year in Rome, doing who knows what. He was being torn apart by his own mind, to put it mildly, though he’d never show it. “So, if The Detective did have issues with me… Sounds like they’ve been dealt with. Now, if that’s everything, father, you can be on your merry way,” he displayed the unwelcome aspect of the Father’s visit by nodding to the detective’s outdoor hallway and making it known he wanted him to leave, if his words hadn’t been enough.

“I just felt that it was my duty to warn you. Because the reason she came to Rome was to, well… Send the devil back to Hell,” the priest paused, giving the conversation just the right amount of suspense. “That, and, well… There came a time where she couldn’t deny her condition anymore, not even to herself, so… I suppose she wanted to deal with that, too,” the priest looked down at the tiny bundle the devil was holding, who was now soundly asleep and cradled comfortably by her father’s embrace. “I suppose you know what I mean by that, and of course, I never let her go through with it, but I felt it was pertinent you knew,”

“The detective would never do that,” he argued, firm regarding his position. Just the thought of his baby girl not existing made his heart ache. Just the lone, simple, frightening thought.

“Chloe is a good person, with a good heartー” Lucifer interrupted the cleric, chimin in another one of his signature comments yet again. That, Lucifer could believe.

“ーFinally, something we can agree on,”

“But whatever she went through, whatever drove her to Rome... It shook her to her very core.” Truth be told, Lucifer just couldn’t understand how seeing a pair of wings shook her so much. Linda had slept with him far more times than she did, found out through seeing his devil face, and yet she had taken it much better than Chloe did. The fact that the sight of his angel wings when he was at his most vulnerable made her run that way made him question if everything they were living in was even real. ”She’s the reason that I’m here. You need to be careful, Mister Morningstar. God knows what she has planned for you,”

With nothing other than a pat on the arm, the cleric found his way out, letting a far too perplexed devil close the door behind himself. The mind below that beautiful, raven hair of his was nothing but an entangled mess of useless information he couldn’t understand, the heart underneath his freckled and warm chest was beating out of it in utter fear of betrayal, and honestly, he wanted to cry from how overwhelmed he was.

Should he just go on with life as it was before william Kinley knocked on the door, or should he do something about it?

He had no doubts that there was an ulterior motive for the cleric’s visit. No one in their right mind would ever believe a priest truly cared for the wellbeing of a self-proclaimed devil, or even the real one, as his case posed. What could he possibly want out of it? To hurt him? To hurt Chloe?

He looked down at his arms, where the fruit of his relationship with Chloe lay, sleeping comfortably as she was cradled in his warm arms. She was nothing but a defenseless, entirely pure soul, nothing but the first being of her species, nothing but the thing he cared about the most since his birth. It was easy to believe that a priest could, in fact, believe her to be the being to bring damnation to earth, it wasn't rocket science. Yet, the mere thought of William Kinley, or any other priest for that matter, coming to get his child and ‘do something about her’ made the worst kind of shiver run down his spine.

Whether the cleric’s words were a truth or not, even if he had good intentions and was just warning him (which was most likely not the case), the idea that Chloe’s fear of divinity could threaten his child was reason enough for him to immediately decide on confronting her. He needed to know if the detective, his detective, may have been plotting to send him and his daughter back to Hell. He needed to know if the human he trusted the most would ever stab him in the back in such a way. 

The rest of the hour went by in a blur. He never finished getting his hair ready, he never tied his bowtie around his neck and made sure his collar was presentable. He never even put his red-bottoms on, the soles of his feet leaving a track of his pacing on Chloe’s fluffy carpet. He never put Clover down, even though the little urchin was really calm and settled in his arms. Not that she would ever complain about extra time on her father’s arms, but by then and taking into account everything he still had to do, he should’ve put her down as soon as Kinley left.

Putting a little more thought into it, the fact that nothing was certain and that his daughter’s mother may be plotting to send him back to Hell terrified him. Not for his own sake, but for his daughter’s. Were humans capable of sending the devil back to Hell and he would just fly himself out, but the fact that Chloe saw him as something so dangerous that it needed to be cast out broke his heart just a little. 

The sound of heels clacking as a certain someone came downstairs brought a little bit of awareness to his spiraling. Elegantly as she had always been, Chloe waltzed into the living room with praises and compliments already on her tongue, but ones that would never see light as the sight before her managed to send them away. All that was left for her to say were words of concern, words of preoccupation. Overdressed for the situation, with a red dress that trailed behind her and a pair of heels she would have never dreamt of buying before, she approached the devil. She walked slowly, fearing his reaction, fearing he might run away like a deer in headlights.

Before her eyes, the devil was looking as he felt, lost, on the verge of breaking, disheveled even if he had previously put thought to his clothes and garments. His eyes were coated by a thin layer of something, maybe a precursor to the feeling of betrayal, he couldn’t tell.

“Lucifer, I… Is everything okay? Why are you not ready?” She asked, genuinely confused and trying to approach him. She could see he had their baby girl cradled tightly into his arms, a little bit too tightly, maybe. 

He looked up at her with an unknown emotion painting his dark orbs, letting Chloe know that, indeed, everything was not okay. 

“You tell me, Detective,” he said, giving a sarcastic tone to his voice as he faced her, his arms around the infant tightening without him noticing. She swallowed a lump as the tone of the lovingly nickname he gave her had undertones of torment.

“What’s wrong?” she asked in genuine ignorance to the storm of thoughts and emotions going through the devil’s head. 

“I just had the strangest encounter with someone...” he started, trying to choose not to believe him, trying to give Chloe the benefit of the doubt. Sadly, all the betrayal bestowed upon him throughout his existence had taught him not to give in, not to trust anymore, and he was slowly but surely crawling back into that shell. “A far-too-kind-to-be-trusted priest, in fact. Father William Kinley,”

“Oh,” and just like that, her world crumbled at her feet. Her longed for stability, her little family, all turned to dust and debris.

She knew there would come a time where she would have to explain herself to Lucifer, all the things she had almost done. After all, he was a decent man and was more than deserving of a reasonable explanation for her abandonment. He was, in a way, entitled to said explanation because it involved Clover, but she just wasn’t ready to do it, or perhaps, would have preferred to do it on her own terms. Alas, she knew there was no use in stopping Kinley. He was more convinced now than ever that Lucifer was the actual devil, and therefore, that Clover was the so-called antichrist.

She took a deep but shaky breath in, trying to weigh her options in a mental scale but knowing all too well that it would be all for naught, for Lucifer valued the truth, honesty. Ready or not, that was what she had to give him, what the angel deserved, what he wanted.

“I...” she tried to start, and the pain of the imminent betrayal only grew bigger in the devil’s eyes.

“And you’ll see, he… Well, he said some things about you that I find hard to believe so, shall we?” he gestured to the couch in the living room and Chloe followed his wordless command, taking a seat and expecting the worst.

He was advertently building his walls back up, masquerading behind the strong, impenetrable man she had once met. Even his eyes were different, all of him was different. The way he was holding Clover, with her head on his shoulder, felt different. It was more tense, more desperate, as if he were holding onto her as a lifeline. 

“What about the date?” she stupidly asked, panicking at the thought of having to explain herself, having her brain go haywire on her. She couldn’t care less about the date, or about the fact that she was wearing clothes worth twice her monthly salary.

“Oh, we’re not going on that date,” the devil stated, looking dangerously hurt as he paced slowly. He chose to remain standing, as it was easier to run away should he need to. “We’re going to talk. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Hello! Please, don't murder me. I know, I know, the angst is coming, so brace yourselves. This is gonna be one hell of a ride hahaha.
> 
> Next chapter's title is "Let the truth sting" and I'm pretty sure all of you can guess why its titled that hahah.
> 
> Take care and I'll see you when chapter 13 is done!


	13. Let the truth sting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: MENTIONS OF ABORTION, CLANDESTINE ABORTION, VOLUNTARY TERMINATION OF PREGNANCY BEFORE TERM, TERMINATION PAST THE LEGAL GESTATION AGE OF THE PREGNANT PERSON, QUESTIONABLE SECOND PARTY FORCING A PREGNANT PERSON TO ABORT.
> 
> Hi guys! Sorry for that, but I feel it was needed. Two thirds of this chapter are a flashback to what happened while Chloe was in Rome.
> 
> If any of the stuff above triggers you, I strongly suggest stop reading by the time Kinley finds out, to the moment the flashback ends and we're left with present Deckerstar. I don't want any of you to end up harmed by anything I write. Also, the next few chapters will brush over this issue as well, and I'll put up the pertinent warnings when those come.
> 
> I also want to state my posture around the issue. I'm pro-choice and I am not ashamed about it, nor will I ever let myself be bullied into believing otherwise. Abortion goes beyond chastising the pregnant person and "saving a life", it's the right of the pregnant person to do whatever they want with their body, and law oftentimes not respecting that. If you feel insulted or disappointed by my beliefs, I strongly encourage you to stop reading my works and following me. Any kind of hatred towards the issue in particular will not be tolerated and I'll be deleting comments that encourage such behaviors.
> 
> Trigger warnings issued, I wanted to thank you all for 8,3k hits and almost 300 kudos! Those are awesome numbers and it's all thanks to you! I also wanna thank my beta for proof-reading this, she's the best!
> 
> Without further adieu, I'll leave you to chapter 13, that sees Chloe and Lucifer have _that_ conversation.
> 
> All my love, Rena.

_ “Mommy, can we go to that same park we went yesterday? I’m bored,” the then nine-year-old said, hoping her mother would adhere to her antics, and hopefully also take her to the gelato place that was conveniently in the corner. The idea of being out of the US had sounded fun, but when she noticed that all her mother would do once they got there was mope around and go to the library for unhealthily long periods of time, things quickly began to turn unbearingly boring for the child in question. _

_ “Sure, monkey. I just gotta go to the bathroom first, okay?” Chloe answered, to which Trixie simply nodded. She really wanted to get out of that hotel room they had rented. “Why don’t you put on some cartoons on the TV while you wait, huh?” Chloe suggested, hoping that the nerves running alongside her blood weren’t bleeding through her voice. She really didn’t want to worry her darling daughter. _

_ “They’re all in Italian and I can’t understand them!” The nine-year-old complained, on the verge of pulling her puppy eyes on her mother. “It’s no fun that way,” _

_ “Baby, I just need you to give me a moment alone, okay?” Chloe asked more directly, looking at her daughter in her beautiful, chocolate eyes. “I promise we’ll go to the park and get some gelato once I’m done.” The detective didn’t wear her badge and gun for no reason, and was quick to understand that her daughter’s main point of interest was the gelato store in the corner of the park, not the park itself. _

_ After Trixie agreed with a nod and a direct request for her cellphone, as she didn’t really have much to entertain herself with, Chloe was finally able to walk into the bathroom and lock the door behind her, letting her nerves run wild and do what they pleased with her. She had to do it, there was no use in postponing the inevitable. _

_ With shaky hands, she reached for the bottom drawer under the bathroom’s sink, pulling out the most dreadful purchase she’d made in that whole year: a pregnancy test. The instructions were clear, although they were in Italian. Chloe just had to trust that all pregnancy tests worked the same around the globe, and the one that she had bought would have to do. It was really simple, she just had to open the box, pee on a little cup the test came with, dip the stick for five seconds and then wait the longest three minutes of her life. She’d done it before, even after having Trixie, since pregnancy scares could sometimes happen. _

_ Her hands grew shakier by the minute, and without actually wanting to, she decided she had to bring light to her situation, she just couldn’t keep postponing it. And so, she tore open the box (because there was no way her unsteady hands would be able to open it without breaking it) and peed in the little plastic cup, so nervous she could feel her own heartbeat inside her head. _

_ Making herself dip the test in the little cup was an entirely different odyssey. It took her about half an hour to uncap the test and dip it because while she was in the unknown, everything was okay. And it wasn’t really the case, everything was not okay, but at least she had the doubt, not the certainty. Who would have known that, once she finally forced herself to dip it for just short of five seconds, the wait would be half as short and not at all agonizing. _

_ Watching the little window in the test go from white, to pink, to two clearly defined lines took less than a minute. Dare she say, even less than thirty seconds. Logically speaking, she was almost ten days late to her period, which put her further along in her pregnancy and, therefore, it was easier for the test to detect it. On the other hand, though, it felt like a huge bucket of ice cold water being dumped over her head, soaking her in the coldest, most cruel of temperatures. _

_ She was pregnant. There were undoubtedly two lines there. What would she do? _

_ It hadn’t taken her long to connect the dots when she first saw Lucifer’s wings. If that bit of divinity was true and angels did, in fact, exist, then so would the devil. And the devil was an angel on himself, which was the thought that drove her over the edge and flew her to Rome. _

_ Maybe, if she thought she was pregnant with a half-angel baby, things would’ve been a lot easier. She would, at least, have been a lot more hopeful, she would have curiously looked forward to meeting her child, feeling a desire to know what it came out like. However and as always, the best case scenario wasn’t her case.  _

_ She came out of the bathroom with empty hands, as the pregnancy test, box and cup were now in the trash can beside the toilet. Nonetheless, as empty as her hands were, her heart was heavy with emotion, crippling in fear. _

_ She was carrying the devil’s spawn, the literal antichrist. The being that would bring death and destruction upon the world, or so the bible said. The only reason why she didn’t drop down on her knees and cried her eyes out was because her nine-year-old was looking at her expectantly, not bothering to hide her desire to go to the park.  _

_ The three weeks following that dreadful day were spent in deep, utter denial. Chloe submerged herself into it, let it drown her as she kept on living and investigating, convincing herself that if she acted as if the problem wasn’t there, then it wasn’t there. However, at night she would shower and the mirror wouldn lie, showing a tiny but visible pouch below her belly button, where what she thought was an abomination was growing.  _

_ She was finally able to make an appointment with an obstetrician when eleven weeks had passed since her last menstrual cycle, again, forcing herself to pick up her phone and call the clinic. Oddly enough, that was the same week when she finally dragged herself out of the AirBNB she and Trixie had moved into, and stumbled upon the Vatican's library, and alongside it, Father William Kinley. _

_ She had done some research before facing the endless walls of religious books inside the Vatican’s library, she wasn’t dumb, of course. However, when she made acquaintances with Father Kinley and told him about Lucifer, she was surprised to find out that they were already investigating him. Lucifer had never been known for hiding himself, in fact, quite the opposite.  _

_ The books she had been able to access through Kinley were amongst the richest sources from where she had learned of divinity, and celestial history. It wasn’t so bad up until the part when Lucifer was cast out of Heaven and made to rule Hell for all of eternity. Actually, it kind of matched perfectly with the little bits that Lucifer had told her about his childhood, and the years (or eons) leading up to his fall. What came next though, only contributed to her first trimester nausea, because besides not wanting to be pregnant with the antichrist, she also had to experience all the side effects that came with it. _

_ Kinley showed her artwork of Lucifer in his devil form, something she had yet to see, biting the heads off of children and doing things so gruesome it was difficult to talk about. Circumstantial evidence piled up, linking his visits to earth with devastating events, like Nazi Germany or the Chicago fires. That was, actually, the first moment she doubted all the research she had been doing. It was as if she couldn’t match the picture Kinley was painting with the one she had of him, of the man she knew.  _

_ What made her doubt, for the very first time since she found out, was something she could remember all too well. She had been scared out of her mind, hiding in an airport’s warehouse while Malcolm Graham looked for her, all with the intent of killing her. She could still hear his voice inside her head, even louder than the echoes of the shot Malcolm had fired.  _

_ “If you’re up there, dad, I need a favor. I’ll be the son you’ve always wanted me to be. I’ll do as you ask, go where you want me to. In exchange, all I ask, is that you protect Chloe,”. _

_ The detective had almost forgotten about that, labeling it off as his demented mind trying to make something out of dying. But then, he came back, and Amenadiel’s explanation for Lucifer’s crazy antics did make a lot of sense to her logical mind, so she just shoved that memory away and kept on going. Her doubts laid on one simple principle, though. If everything was true and divinity was actually a thing, how could Lucifer have written a blank check to his father, whom he despised, for her own life? It made no sense, there was not a single way to look at it that could be even barely feasible. _

_ That was when she told Kinley that the man he was describing wasn’t the man she knew, and that she was done for the day. Kinley had tried to keep going, though, telling her just how manipulative and charming he could be, just to pursue his desires with no regard for everything he left behind. Chloe chose not to listen to that, at least not that night. It was the night before her first ultrasound, and she was nervous as it was, there was no need to make things more complicated. _

_ The next day, throughout the entirety of her ultrasound, she refused to look at the screen, even when her doctor (with very poor english and a strong accent) encouraged to. She wanted to form no attachment to that thing, at least not until she knew what she was going to do about it. The doctor told her everything seemed to be fine with the baby, and when he asked if she wanted to know an estimate of the gender, Chloe briefly shook her head. She just got her due date, a bottle with prenatal vitamins and left the clinic without saying much, still not wanting to acknowledge that her baby would probably bring damnation to mankind. _

_ She kept on investigating at the Vatican and ignoring her pregnancy until she just couldn’t anymore. She was, in a way, buying time but also trying to run away from it as quickly as possible. _

_ The day that everything came crashing down regarding her pregnancy was when, on a walk with Kinley, as the priest kept on telling her the same stories and trying to get her on board with his plan, Chloe’s naked arm brushed against a spike on accident. She had brought her other hand to her arm to stop the bleeding because it had hurt like something that bleeds does, but astonishment painted her face as not a single droplet of blood stained her skin, and not even a mark was to be found where a deep cut should have been. _

_ From then on, Kinley was quite quick to put two and two together and realize what was going on. He’d been suspecting Chloe was pregnant because she had been clearly showing since at least fourteen weeks along, all that was left to do was to find out if the creature was of Lucifer’s making, and then he knew. _

_ It took Kinley around two weeks to convince Chloe that what was growing inside of her was an abomination, that it would bring destruction upon earth, and that they needed to deal with it as soon as humanly possible. That was when he told her about the prophecy, and how he feared that it was already too late for them to do something about it. “When the devil walks the earth, and finds his first love, evil shall be released.” Was what he’d said, and the prospect of being Lucifer’s first love both terrified her, and made something flutter inside her chest. The odd thing about that flutter, though, was that it was the first positive feeling she’d felt since finding out and arriving in Italy. _

_ With her head turned into a mess of thoughts, ideas and theories, Kinley managed to bring her to a private clinic in Rome that did safe, clandestine abortions. Since the procedure wasn’t legal past twelve weeks of pregnancy, and Chloe was eighteen weeks along, it had to be done somewhere low-key and that wouldn’t bite Kinley or the church in the ass if it went wrong, and the cleric made sure about that. They would forge a report saying the fetus had something wrong and that its condition was not compatible with life, therefore justifying the termination. _

_ Chloe didn’t know it, but Kinley had been using low doses of sedatives to keep her more ‘open minded’ and malleable, therefore making his job easier. He had deemed the creature inside her womb as the bringer of damnation, and he couldn’t have Chloe’s maternal instincts kick in and ruin his plan. Chloe, however, would find out once she was on a gurney and with her feet on stirrups that her thoughts hadn’t been her own. All it took was for the doctor to ask if she had been on any medications that affected the central nervous system in the last fourteen days, given that the pill that would work alongside the D&C to complete the abortion could interfere with other drugs and be life threatening. Kinley stopped the doctor at that and doubted, balancing the risks and paying attention to the little bit of a conscience he had left. Chloe noticed the way he was debating with himself, not knowing what to say until he chose not to say anything, and that made her doubt. After all, putting an end to the end of times with just one helpless casualty was a good risk-benefit balance. _

_ “I’m not sure,” she told the doctor directly, and could see how Kinley realized just how much he had underestimated her. “Have I taken anything that can harm me in these past two weeks?” she asked no one in particular, and the situation made the doctor sat between Chloe’s legs doubt. _

_ “Chloe, you gave your consent to the procedure, right? You’ve signed all the forms?” _

_ “Of course she has, doctor. Now, if you may, we’ve got somewhere to be,” Kinley answered on Chloe's behalf, defensively, wanting to ensure that the procedure was done and the abomination terminated. _

_ And that was about the moment when everything regarding the abortion went downhill.  _

_ Chloe turned her head the other way, trying to figure out if Kinley had been drugging her, which was more than possible. Other than, instead of facing a blank wall to put all her thoughts on, she faced the ultrasound monitor that showed not an abomination, but an eighteen-week old fetus moving around, kicking its thin legs at the same time Chloe felt flutters around her stomach.  _

_ “This fetus is completely healthy. If you do wish to terminate the pregnancy, I can forge a report that says it’s got a condition that’s not compatible with life. That is, if you give me your consent right now, Chloe.” The doctor, clever as always, had been able to tell something was off between William and her. Since Kinley wasn’t wearing his usual clothing, the doctor just assumed they were a couple, only that a few minutes alone with them told him things were far different than what he had initially thought. _

_ “Doctor, let us not make a fuss about this. All the paperwork is signed and Chloe is ready to go. I can assure you, she hasn’t taken any medication that can put her life in danger,” he bluntly lied to the doctor, and that was when Chloe had definitely had enough.  _

_ With the image of her unborn child’s heart as it beat rapidly inside her womb, she got her legs out of the stirrups and stood up, tears already roaming her cheeks as if they owned the place. _

_ “I don’t consent to this, no. This is just crazy!” She looked at Kinley with tears in her eyes and the sound of her baby’s heartbeat clouding her mind. “You are crazy,” she said with an oddly calm tone, and that was it. _

_ She picked up all her clothes and dressed herself up before storming the clinic, trying to do something about her tears but not being able to do so. She knew Trixie was at a youth group in the Vatican still, probably getting her brain washed, so she had to go back to pick her daughter up, knowing there was no way she’d keep on going with Kinley’s madness.  _

_ With her daughter’s hand in hers, she ran outside the place and only stopped when she saw a willow tree that oddly resembled her. She felt as if she had been staring at herself in a non-existent mirror, and so she stopped, sitting with Trixie on the damp grass and letting her tears flow. _

_ “What’s wrong, mommy? Please, you have to tell me,” Trixie had been asking about her state since Chloe pulled her out of the youth group, but Chloe hadn’t said a word. _

_ “Look, baby, I need to tell you something, alright?” She tried to calm herself down for the sake of her daughter, for the child didn’t deserve to see her in such a state.  _

_ That was when the sight of a lone four-leaf-clover caught her eye, and suddenly it was all she could think about. It was as if her child, the growing baby she had neglected for the past eighteen weeks, had told her that everything would be alright. That he, or she, was there for her. With shaky hands and as her tears turned into a small smile, she picked up the clover and placed it on her growing stomach, acknowledging her child’s existence for what could be considered the very first time.  _

_ She grabbed her daughter’s hand and chose the best moment possible to place it on her belly, as her unborn brother or sister gave its first kicks. Chloe could only hope Trixie was able to feel them as she could. _

_ “You’re going to be a big sister, baby,” she told her, and Trixie had smiled so widely and beautifully, that all of Chloe’s doubts just vanished for at least that moment in time. “Can you feel the kicks?” _

_ The next two months after that revelation went by in a blur, and Trixie got what she wanted. Chloe flew out of Italy immediately, and took her darling daughter on a tour of Europe, since she wasn’t entirely ready to go back to Los Angeles and face her life.  _

_ The first time she heard back from Kinley after leaving Italy, was a few days after she landed back in Los Angeles. He’d contacted her to tell her he had gone to the states, too, and that he was willing to keep on going with their plan of sending the devil back to hell, but all without involving her unborn child. In a moment of weakness, Chloe accepted. Kinley seemed to need her, and she was all for keeping the world from being damned, but she was convinced her baby had nothing to do with it.  _

_ And so they agreed she would sedate him and he would perform the exorcism, just like they had before the priest found out about her pregnancy. She would only have to be alone with him, that was all. _

_ But then… Then she actually came back. She set foot in the precinct she had so missed and saw, from a distance, the way Lucifer was looking. Standing on top of the stairwell, both Dan and the devil were unaware of her presence, so she chose to watch them silently. _

_ Oddly enough, Dan and Lucifer seemed to be in amicable terms, and the way that the latter was looking was just heart-wrenching. It was all in his eyes, the pain, the uncertainty, coating an usually bright chocolate brown with the depths of sorrow. That couldn’t possibly be the man Kinely was convinced would bring damnation to humankind, he seemed so… So sad. _

_ All she needed to finally walk down the stairs was a deep breath. Just that. The way she didn’t feel threatened at all by him, by their situation, it was oddly comforting. All she had to do was adjust her waddle to walk down a flight of stairs at thirty-two weeks pregnant, just that. _

_ All she could remember from that point forward was the way that a tiny vial made her purse feel as if it were carrying twenty elephants. It was three weeks of that, from the moment she and Lucifer talked to when he came back from his exile. She could remember just how heavy and confused her heart was when she almost emptied it inside his drink, and the relief she felt when the glass of whiskey fell onto the floor and shattered into a million pieces.  _

_ And then, enter the jewel of their conversation. The way that Lucifer was only vulnerable, killable, hurtable, if Chloe was anywhere near him. Needless to say, that sole fact made a new set of gates open inside Chloe’s heart and mind, and that was what ultimately drove her to believing in him. _

_ If only it were that easy in the present date. _

* * *

“I did lie to you...” she chose that as her closing line, watching as the man she thought she was falling in love with was clutching onto their daughter for dear life. “And for a moment… A while, I- I was helping him try to send you back to Hell.”

“How could you do that to me? To me?!” he’d started, and Chloe could only flinch at the volume and hurt of his voice. It was so raw, so painful to hear. It was as if a bucket of blame were being dumped onto her shoulders, and all she could do was embrace it. She deserved it.

“Because I was terrified!” she yelled back, unable to contain the boiling mess of emotions inside of her. That conversation, telling him everything she had gone through while in Rome, had been the last straw. “You are the actual devil, I mean… ” tears were already rolling past her cheeks and making a mess of the beautiful makeup she had put on when she thought they’d be going on a date, and honestly, she couldn’t care less. All she wanted to do was hold her little family close and never let them go, but she was no longer sure she deserved that. “Every story of good and bad from… Throughout history, throughout time, says that  _ you _ are the embodiment of evil. A-and how was I, Chloe Decker, a… A nobody… Supposed to deal with that?”

He couldn’t look at her anymore, not after having her admit to such horrible things. Ridding herself of their daughter, the little, defenseless, baby girl that was currently sleeping on his arms? The sole reason why he changed his entire life around, the only being since the beginning of time he cared for more than he did Chloe, or even himself? He couldn’t rid himself of the image, of the thought of Clover never coming to life, never coming to  _ his _ life, much less the fact that Chloe would do something so horrible. 

“But… But then… Then I saw her, on… On the little screen at the clinic, a-and… I saw her little heart beating, and her legs kicking. And then I came back, and… And I saw you. I really saw you. And I remembered how you made me feel, and I realized, Lucifer, you’re not that guy.” She said, wanting to believe her tears were under control but facing the sad reality that they weren’t.

“No.” he answered simply, feeling as heat consumed his body cell by cell, muscle by muscle. A heat so familiar yet so unknown, something he’d lived with for most of his life, but something he had proudly lost. All it took for him to get it back was the feeling of betrayal coursing through his body, swimming alongside his blood, rotting him at his very core: his heart. “But what if I am that guy?” he asked, having turned away and refusing to face her.

“You’re not.” She said, sure of something for the very first time since that conversation started. “I’ve been raising our daughter with you for two months, Lucifer, you… You’re not a monster. You’re the furthest thing from that beast that… That history a-and religion paint you out to be,” she said, words taken from the depths of her heart, wishing she could just go back in time and accept him for who he truly was. “And… If you feel like you are, you… You could change.”

“But what if I can’t?” he questioned her, the coat of tears lining his eyes growing thicker by the minute. He finally turned around, looking at the woman that he once cared for more than he did himself, looking at her with all the hurt she had caused him, with all the pain that reached deep into the profundities of his soul, a pain so great it was making his temperature spike and his cheeks burn with a fire he hadn’t seen in almost a year.

And just like that, his devil face was back. 

The punishment his father had inflicted onto him for defying his orders and wanting free will coated his face like it had done for eons, turning his eyes from their hurt, bitter, chocolate color to the reds and oranges of hellfire. No hair, charred skin, eyes glowing bright red and sunken in their pits as Chloe gasped, growing genuinely scared. Her only brush with divinity had been when she saw him helpless, with his wings covering his being in a subconscious way to protect himself, his soft skin charred by the sun. That was the beast he so despised, the beast that mankind was terrified of, but that was also the angel tasked with creating light, the angel that would sing his daughter to sleep every night, songs in a tongue that humanity had never heard of. How could they co-exist? How was it possible?

“Could you accept me like this?” he asked, knowing that he didn’t look like the hunk he was anymore. The pain of the betrayal had been more than enough to bring the beast out, to let him connect back with the version of himself that had shielded his weak spots away.

Chloe looked away in an instant, fearing that the face staring back at her would haunt her nightmares. She knew it was him, her partner. She wanted to walk up to him and kiss his charred lips until they became soft and plush again, yet, she was frozen in place. All she could do was talk, and honestly, she was already pretty mad at the words spilling from her mouth.

“I… Oh… You have no idea how much I want to. I do, I’m...” she looked at him for very brief intervals of time, taking in the fear that his face inflicted her but also the shame that it caused him. He didn’t want to be seen that way, she knew that more than anyone, and yet, all she could do was remove the knife off his back, the one she had stabbed him with, and shove her fingers into the wound, making it hurt all over again. “I’m trying,” she said mid-gasp, yet again looking away.

“But could you?” he asked again, walking closer to her and making her instinctively walk a couple of steps back. She stuttered, debating whether to stare at him or not, not knowing what to say to him.

“I don’t know.” She ended up confessing, crying through her words as she spilled a truth, one she wasn’t proud of. She blinked and the charred skin and red eyes were gone, leaving the devil looking like the angel he was, like the angel she couldn’t see.

“Then I have my answer.” the layer of tears coating his eyes got to its thickest, but he refused to let even a single tear break through and run down his cheek. He wouldn't cry, not with Chloe still in front of him. He refused to let her know just how hurt he was.

The detective just cried and watched as Lucifer picked up essential things from her place, evidently intending to get away. He grabbed as much clothing and diapers for Clover as possible, all the bottles they owned, and the entire stash of frozen breast milk because he would be going back to the penthouse. He refused to live in the same space as someone who had wanted his daughter dead, and him trapped in Hell for the rest of eternity, even if she claimed she wasn’t like that anymore. That just wouldn’t work.

Chloe didn’t fight him, she just couldn’t. He had been constantly holding their daughter and she just couldn’t risk getting her hurt. She knew that as long as Clover was with him, then she would be okay, but the pain of knowing he would take her with him was incapacitating. She needed to let him cool off, at least for one night. They could talk about their daughter the next day. Or so she was trying to convince herself of.

It took him less than fifteen minutes to stash everything inside a duffel bag and leave, not even turning back to stare at the mother of his child in the face. She didn’t deserve a goodbye, but she did deserve to know the consequences to her actions.

“Don’t ever reach out to me, or Clover again. Don’t even think about it. We’re done.” and with that, he slammed the door behind his back and buckled his baby into her car seat, taking his sedan home. If it were solely up to him, Chloe Decker would never, ever, see his or his daughter’s faces ever again, and he intended to keep that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said before, no pro-life/pro-choice banter will be tolerated down in the comment section. I would actually love it if you could just brush past that and tell me what you think of the chapter and storyline on itself, instead of focusing on that. This applies for the next few chapters as well.
> 
> Next chapter's title is... "The roots of the apple tree". I'll be talking about it over at my IG: @crime_solvingdevil. Be sure to follow me there!
> 
> Take care!


	14. The roots of the apple tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Hope you weren’t too sad after last chapter!
> 
> Oddly enough, I managed to get chapter 14 ready in more or less the same frequency I used to upload, so it’s not like you’ve missed much!
> 
> I promise things will get better before the ending of this word monster, I promise!! Don’t hate on me pls!
> 
> I’ll leave you to it!
> 
> All my love, Rena.

He had to stop the car at one point, he just couldn’t keep on driving. His hands wouldn’t be able to shift gears as he should, they would shake with every single breath he took. He was ashamed to admit he couldn’t get the car up and running on some occasions, which led to several angry honks from the people behind him.

He pulled over sometime between the moment when Clover woke up and started crying her lungs out, and the moment when the coat of tears over his eyes grew too thick for him to know where he was even going. He needed to stop, he needed the pain to stop. 

He got out in the middle of the highway, not caring one single bit about the tickets and fines he would get, and he finally let the first tear out. The first of many. A tear so bitter, so angry, so… hurt. He didn’t want to be crying, he didn’t want to feel the void of betrayal, the void of losing someone he once considered his everything.

Sometime after the first tear came out, his fist punched a crater on the car’s door, leaving a dent so deep and atrocious that it almost compared to the feeling compressing his heart. Almost being the keyword. The sound and inevitable motion of the car as he punched it, not once but twice, startled his baby girl even more, making her cry in a way he’d never heard before, not even in Hell.

“Why, dad, why?!” He shouted to the darkening skies, feelings so ugly and unbecoming easing their way into his heart as if they owned the place. “Why would you put her in my path for this?!” He cried silently, since his daughter was doing all the screaming for him. “Of course, to keep on breaking me! Well, you got it now!”

The motto he’d lived by for the entirety of his life as the devil was ‘If you’ve got nothing to lose, nothing can be taken from you.’ He now knew he was wrong, and however unbecoming the weakness may be, Clover was the best thing to ever happen to him, and he wouldn’t trade her for anything. Clover would always be his little sun, the apple of his eye, and if for her he had to go through everything Chloe Decker entailed, then he should be more than happy. 

Other than he wasn’t happy. And he honestly didn’t know if he ever wanted to be happy. 

Clover made him happy, she was his sunshine, but so was Chloe. Or rather, she had been beginning to be. His hope, his trust, everything that Chloe had ever meant to him had been shattered past repair, and he truly didn’t know if there would ever be a way to fix things between them, nor was he sure he hoped there were. 

“I’m broken! Is this what you wanted!?” And as if his father had heard him, an unexpected rainfall was God’s answer. “You meteorologically-inclined bastard! What does that even mean?!” He asked in despair as his father poured heavy rain on his shoulders, blending them with his tears and soaking him up entirely. 

A couple of sighs later, ones breathed out in a futile attempt to calm himself down, he picked his daughter up, cradled her against his chest, and with nothing other than one last, angry, hurt look at the heavens, he departed. He hung his duffel bag on one of his shoulders, unfurled his unwanted wings and flew himself to his penthouse, a place he no longer could call his home. He had nowhere to call home.

He landed about thirty seconds later on the balcony of his very lonely penthouse. Maze had been staying at a beach house of his, per her request, so no one had resided there in more that two months, which explained why everything was covered in bedsheets and there was an unfathomable amount of boxes piled up by the elevator doors. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about having stuff for Clover, since he had been compulsively online-shopping for her since her birth, and more times than not he forgot to change the delivery address. 

He shook his wings much like a wet dog does once they find shelter after a storm, and stepped in, wings now folded neatly inside their pockets but clothes dripping on his marble floors. At least his baby girl was dry, that was all that mattered.

He rushed to his bedroom, where a white sheet laid over his conveniently made bed. He made a nest of pillows, something that would keep his daughter comfortable and minimize the risk of having her fall onto the floor. He placed her there with the utmost care, dropping everything he’d brought from Chloe’s onto the floor.

Clover was inconveniently whimpering sadly, borderline crying, and it made him feel unsure about going to his closet to get some dry clothes, but after weighing his options on a mental scale, he decided he needed to change. Enduring the pain that hearing his daughter cry made him feel, he rushed to his closet, dropped all of his drenched clothes on the floor as quickly as he could, and dressed himself up in a pair of silk boxers and a silk robe, not wanting to be seen, reflecting to the outside how he felt on the inside. 

He came back rushing to Clover’s aid, picking her up and cradling her close to his chest. Ever since her birth, they’d had a very corporeal kind of communication. Clover sought for comfort on the arms of her parents, one would dare say even more so with Lucifer than she did Chloe. As he held her and bounced up and down to get her to stop crying, a thought flew by his mind. What if Chloe’s absence impacted Clover negatively? 

He forced that thought out of his head as soon as it came. Chloe had wanted him trapped in hell for all eternity, she had wanted to murder their child. Why should her absence weigh in on how their future would be? Why should he let her? 

Only that it wasn’t up to him. Chloe had been, up to date, the human that had impacted his life in the strongest way possible. She had made him question himself, find himself in a way, and he deserved to mourn letting her go. As much reflecting she’d helped him do, she had also betrayed him to the greatest extent a soul could ever have. He dare say, even more than his father did when he had Michael push him off the borders of Heaven.

And just like that, the tears came back. Only that this time he let them be, he didn’t restrain them. His sobs intertwined with his daughter’s as he held his little ray of sunshine close to his chest, mourning the loss of the woman he almost gave his life up for. 

He couldn’t quite recall the moment when his and Clover’s sobs went from being theirs, to being his alone. She probably tired herself out, crying her little lungs out until her energy depleted. There was no halo of light surrounding them anymore, and probably there wouldn’t be one for a while.

Once he was able to come back into himself, the anger pushed the sadness and grief away, and the tears he'd shed dried up with the inevitable hellfire his eyes turned into. He refused to acknowledge the comeback of his devil face while in that state, but he needed to do something about the pain. It was excruciating, crushing, incapacitating. He’d have Maze beat him with all her strength for a thousand years if it would at least give him a second of peace.

There came a time when he just couldn’t hold it anymore. He laid his daughter on the pillow fort he’d previously made, letting her sleep soundly after all the crying she did, and his eyes locked up with the wall of expensive whiskeys and other distilled beverages he had. If he couldn’t have Maze kick the pain out of him, alcohol would have to do it.

Between the first glass and the last was a span of an hour and a half. That was all it took for the once brightest of all angels to drink the entirety of the alcohol he had on his penthouse. His useless, angelical metabolism could be a pain in the ass in certain circumstances, that one being the main example. He was mildly numb, he just needed a little bit more to get there, to get to that point where the incapacitation came from alcohol intoxication and not from utter despair.

Being the most negligent he’d ever been, he went downstairs, leaving his two-month-old completely alone as he sought for a cure to his despair. He dragged his feet towards the bar, where his bartender, Patrick, was busy making cocktails for pretty ladies and handsome men. He grabbed the first few bottles that he encountered, full or not, putting one on top of another without even looking at his club.

“Mister Morningstar,” Patrick tried to stop him, coming into his field of sight. “We… We’re gonna need those,” he said, pointing at the bottles the devil was holding. 

“Not as much as I do,” he answered drunkenly, with all the intentions of going back to the calmness of his penthouse.

“Business is booming tonight. You sure you don’t wanna stay?” Patrick insisted, and Lucifer just looked at him like he wanted to smite both him and himself out of existence.

“Why on earth would I want to do that?” and Patrick’s not so subtle side look was the one thing that actually caught his attention, at least for one brief second.

He followed the bartender’s line of sight, encountering a very long, brunette, curly mane that felt far too familiar to be true. Her feminine silhouette was dressed in white, with a dress that went past her knees and twirled with her as she danced, bare feet getting dirty with the filth of the dancefloor. The spotlights were all on her, in the middle of everything, and like a moth to a flame, he walked towards the light, expertly dodging the drunk patrons that filled the club up that evening, and sobering up as if he hadn’t drunk his entire collection of antique scotch. As he got closer, he could see how tiny droplets of sweat covered her evenly tanned skin, shining because of the way that her arms moved around to the beat of the music, and for a moment it was as if Amenadiel had slowed down time.

It couldn’t be her, could it?

And as he stood there, facing her with shock painting his face as if it were a blank canvas, she stopped dancing, looking into his eyes while a smile crept up her beautiful face.

“Eve?” he asked her with astonishment painting his voice, looking down at her petite frame as she pulled her hair out of her face.

“Hey Luce!” she greeted him, shouting over the loud, rhythmic music. “Long time no see!”

* * *

“You look… great,” and it was a truth, he meant that.

“Yeah?” She questions with her high-pitched, excitable voice.

“Same as you did back then,” much to his surprise. 

He had invited her up so they could chat. After all, he could use something to distract himself with, or rather someone. Besides, it’s not every day that a soul manages to break out of the heavenly gates, he needed to know how his father would even allow that.

The lack of crying coming from his bedroom was good enough for him to know that his daughter was still down, and would be for a least another half hour. She always slept like a log after crying herself to slumber. And he wouldn’t lie, Eve’s presence did pose an interesting turn to an evening he thought would be all about crying and letting himself be taken over by the pain. The distraction managed to ease the aching just a little, dulling it out but leaving it there, making sure he was still aware of its presence. 

“Thank you,” she said as she tucked her hair behind both ears at the same time, then taking the appletini the devil was offering her. “So do you… Better, even,” her eyes got lost in the gap of his robe, a gap that showed just enough skin to make her feel even more glad that she came back. 

“I must say, this is quite the surprise,” he said awkwardly as he closed his robe, keeping his bare skin for himself while he made his way over to the other side of the couch, lifting the sheet he still hadn’t completely taken off before sitting. “You… Back here… On earth” Eve laughed, like the matter wasn’t important. “How?” he asked, genuinely intrigued as he tried to ignore the dullness compressing his heart.

“Found a way out of Heaven,” she answered simply, taking a sip of her appletini. 

“I didn’t think that was possible… For humans,” he answered quickly, every trace of alcohol just gone from his system. It was as if he had never drunk five shelves of fancy whiskey.

“What can I say? I’ve always been a bit of a rule breaker. But… You know that,” she said suggestively, to which Lucifer didn’t follow as he usually would. “So I flew the coop. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in a dusty, old tomb, so I caught a plane and came straight to LA.”

“Right… And Adam? Where’s that barrel of laughs?” he asked, showing genuine interest.

“Still up there, where everyone is always so… Happy,” he could discern the tone in her voice. When she said everyone, he knew she wasn’t included in the term. 

“But not you,” she gave him the auditory equivalent to a nod as she swallowed yet another sip of her drink. For a woman that had spent more than two hundred thousand years in Heaven, she did know how to handle her booze.

“I always felt like something was… Missing. People always forget. I didn’t choose Adam, I was created for him. Turns out an arranged existence kinda takes the spark out of things,” she sighed, finally starting to understand what living was like, what free will was like. “We got along just fine, but… I don’t think he ever really loved me. The real me, you know?”

“It hurts… Not being accepted for who you are,” for a moment he dove straight back into the dull ache compressing his heart, but he wouldn’t let him take it. He’d cried enough, even if there was no proof of the tears he’d shed. “I… I would imagine,” he put his strong suit back on almost immediately, wanting Eve to believe that everything was okay.

“You know, I’ve been in Heaven for longer than any other human, and let me tell you, paradise can get a little… Predictable,” she sipped from her glass again, looking out the floor to ceiling windows the penthouse sported.

“Preaching to the choir,” he agreed, having been in Heaven for easily a hundred times the time Eve had, if not more. That was before his fall, that is.

“So, I started meeting every new soul that was coming through those pearly gates, just taking in all their amazing stories, you know? About everything that was going on down here, and then… Then I realized something huge, Luce.” She didn’t even pause, relishing in the glory of having her first love’s utmost attention. “What I truly desire most… Can only be found down here.”

“And, what is it you truly desire?” he asked, taking the mojo out of the question and trusting her honesty.

It was when her eyes started going from his eyes to his lips, and back up, that the moment was cut short. There was no way she was actually going to tell him she was back solely for him, but what broke the moment wasn’t the awkwardness, or anything about their conversation really. It was a cry. A cry to which Lucifer responded almost completely instinctively, changing his attention focus to whomever it came from. 

“I’m sorry, I...” and with nothing more than that he rushed to the bedroom, only to come back to the living room with a crying baby cradled to his chest and a wet duffel bag hanging from one shoulder. He placed the bag on top of the bar and took out the cooler with the milk from it, instinctively understanding that what his daughter wanted was food. 

“I… Luce...” Eve was not trying to hide her confusion from him as she stood there, watching him make a bottle for a baby that he was holding. The image she had of him in the garden with the image she was seeing right then could not possibly be of the same person. “What is going on?” she finally asked as she saw him heat up the glass bottle using the hellfire he could conjure up to his hand. Much like the skin on his cheeks would burn, so would other parts. Maybe that method was more efficient to heat up the bottle.

“Oh, well, yes… This. I’m sorry.” He apologized, coming back to the couch with a hungry baby on his arms and a hot bottle in hand. “This… She’s my daughter. Her name is Clover,” he introduced the infant as she eagerly started drinking the milk from the bottle.

“I’m so confused right now,” she said, sitting back down and staring into the baby’s beautiful, chocolate eyes. 

“That is a really, and I mean really, long story. One that I… I’m not willing to tell right now, but I might later on.” He confessed, forcefully trying to suppress the pain of betrayal by distracting himself with his guest. “She’s… Well, she’s the byproduct of a relationship I had… With a human.”

“I… I didn’t even know angels could… You know… Have kids,” she said, still confused as to why a half angel baby, the only one of its species, was eating eagerly right beside her.

“Oh, we’re not supposed to, but… Well, Amenadiel is having his own soon, if it’s any consolation.” He explained, trying to brush over the topic of how those two babies came to be. Well, at least the topic of his own, Amenadiel’s wasn’t that difficult to explain, it was covered in logic. “He… Well, he lost his wings and his powers, and then had sex with my therapist so she’s pregnant right now. They’re having a boy, apparently,”

“Oh… That’s… Interesting.” Eve concluded, feeling slightly more at ease with the fact that the devil had an offspring, and even more so, the fact that he really seemed to care about her. “But what about you? You haven’t lost your wings, right?” And there it went. People could say whatever they wanted about Eve, that she was the first sinner, they could like or hate her story, but no one could deny she was brilliant.

“Ehm… Yes, I cut them off, but… Father forced a new pair on me that I can’t get rid of, and, well, my story is a lot more complicated. I just… I don’t want to talk about it, if we may.” Eve understood when enough was enough, so she stopped pushing the issue.

“Well, how… How are you taking it? I mean, I’ve read the Bible. I know what’s supposed to happen if the devil has a child.” She said, genuinely worried about humanity and what would come after them if the devil were to bear a child unto a human.

“That’s an entire pot of bullshit. I won’t let Clover do anything like that, that’s insane.” He explained, rocking his baby back and forth unconsciously. “In spite of everything that’s said about me, I… I care for humanity. And I care for my daughter, too. So, if it’s up to me, Clover will grow up to be an amazing woman… or angel… or… whatever it is that she is, and no consequences will fall upon earth because of her.” Eve bit her lip, liking what she was seeing, even if it wasn’t necessarily what she was expecting.

“Well, as long as she’s with you, I’m sure she’ll turn out to be an amazing soul.” She said, trying to slip back into the mood they were in before the unexpected bundle of joy woke up and decided she wanted to eat. “She’s beautiful,” she reached out to the infant and offered her hand, and Clover grabbed tightly onto her index finger as she ate, looking up at her dad with her big, round, beautiful eyes.

“Why, thank you,” he said, trying to slip back into his old persona, but finding it extremely difficult. All the hurt he was still feeling, it wasn’t in standby, it was just in slow motion. “Amenadiel can’t compete with this, that I assure you of,” Eve laughed lightheartedly, moving her hand up and down and therefore making Clover’s arm rise and lower at her pace.

“You know, if you ever… I don’t know, maybe you need parenting advice… You can always call me” she said softly, looking at the infant. “I brought up six kids in a garden and I'm proud of five out of them, so...” That commentary actually managed to bring a laugh out of the devil, one that wasn’t forced, but genuine. 

“I’ll keep you in mind,” he replied, putting Clover over his shoulder to burp her since she was done with her bottle. “So… Do you have anywhere to stay?” He stood up and walked towards the bar to place the baby bottle down and pick up one last, surviving, glass of scotch.

“I… haven’t even thought of that yet” she answered, trying to adjust herself to earth as it was then, not two hundred thousand years ago.

“Well, I can help you out,” he wouldn’t make her go out in the pouring weather his father had decided to give them, so he would do what any gentleman would and offer her to stay at his place. “I have a guest room down the hall. You can stay here for as long as you want,”

“Really? Oh my God, that would be so sweet of you! I wouldn’t want to impose...” she said, walking up to him with the intent of thanking him further. “I know you’re busy with your baby, and...”

“Nonsense. I always have room for an old friend,” he smiled at her, a small, tiny, itty bitty smile that captured to perfection the ambiguity of his emotions. “All I ask is that you keep my father out of it,” he said, half jokingly, half seriously. He hated all and every expression that called upon his father’s name. 

“Okay, then. I won’t.” She smiled widely, showing a perfect array of white teeth. “He can suck it!”

He wouldn't’ lie, he was crushed like chalk powder, broken past the point of repair, shattered. He felt this ache around his heart that could be impossibilitating, nothing quite more literal than heartbreak. He would have never expected someone he trusted so much, someone like Chloe, to do that to him, but he surely was thankful for Eve’s visit. He could tell the evening hadn’t ended how she wanted it to, he knew desire, he was its master, but at least he could tell that everything she said was genuine, and that he could count on her. 

Only God knew how much he needed someone he could count on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m still trying to figure out chapter 15’s title, so I’ll post about it in my IG: @crime_solvingdevil
> 
> Lots of love!


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